Plasma fluid flow behavior and power generation characteristics in a high-temperature inert gas plasma faraday type MHD generator

Abstract

The plasma fluid flow behavior and power generation characteristics in a Faraday-type magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) generator using high temperature inert gas (argon) plasma has been examined by a time-dependent twodimensional numerical simulation. The inhomogeneous and unstable plasma at an inlet total temperature of 7000K results in the reduction and fluctuation of the output power. The plasma changes to homogeneous and stable one with the increase in the inlet total temperature to 9000 K. One of the reasons of the suppression of the ionization instability can be due to the weakness of the dependency of the electrical conductivity on the electron number density because the coulomb collision of electrons becomes dominant under the departure from Saha equilibrium. © 2014 The Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan.