Numerical study of plasma behavior in a disk-shaped noble gas MHD generator

Abstract

Plasma behavior in cesium-seeded argon (Ar/Cs) and xenon-seeded argon (Ar/Xe) disk-shaped MHD generators are compared under almost the same working conditions using r-θ two-dimensional simulation. For both working gases, uniform plasma occurs at the optimum load resistance, and the power outputs are the same under an identical inlet ionization degree. For Ar/Cs, plasma is stable and uniform in the range of electron temperature of 4300–5800 K basically according to the linear perturbation theory. In the actual plasma in the MHD generator, however, the uniform plasma still can be maintained even at higher electron temperatures due to the low three-body recombination coefficient of Ar. For Ar/Xe, on the other hand, uniform plasma is maintained when the characteristic time of the electron number density is longer than the residence time of the working gas where the electron temperature is around 4300–8600 K, even though unstable plasma is suggested from the linear perturbation theory.