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High Temperature Material Processes (An International Quarterly of High-Technology Plasma Processes)

An International Journal

ISSN for PRINT: 1093-3611

Institutional price:	$604.00
Issues per year:	4

Best Paper Award Selection - Editorial Board Site

2005, Volume9

174 pages

DOI: 10.1615/HighTempMatProc.v9.i4

Issue price - $144.00

SULFUR LAMP - LTE MODELLING AND EXPERIMENTS

C. W. Johnston
Currently at: GE Lighting Operations Limited, Melton Road, Leicester LE4 7PD, United Kingdom

B. Hartgers
Department of Applied Physics, NLf 1.0.4, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands

Harm van der Heijden
Department of Applied Physics, Eindhoven University of Technology, P. O. Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands

K. Garloff
Department of Applied Physics, NLf 1.0.4, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands

G. M. Janssen
Department of Applied Physics, NLf 1.0.4, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands

B. H. P. Broks
Department of Applied Physics, Eindhoven University of Technology, P. O. Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands

Jan van Dijk
Department of Applied Physics, Eindhoven University of Technology, P. O. Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands

Joost J. A. M. van der Mullen
Department of Applied Physics, Eindhoven University of Technology, P. O. Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands

ABSTRACT

A combined experimental/modeling approach has been taken in order to further our understanding of the high-pressure sulfur discharge. This plasma has the appealing property of producing a pleasant visible spectrum and doing so efficiently. Moreover, the spectrum originates entirely from the sulfur dimer. However, very little is known about this new visible light source.
The integrated environment for the construction and execution of plasma models, PLASIMO [1], has been used to model a 1D LTE energy balance of the lamp including radiation transport with the aim of reproducing the observed spectrum [2, 3, 4] Several atomic lines found in the spectrum were used for the direct measurement of temperature [5]. Power interruption experiments were performed and the spectral response was both measured and modeled as a function of wavelength [6].
The LTE model reproduces measured spectra and operational trends well. Average plasma temperatures of 4000 K have been measured and the model is within 10% of this value. The response of the entire spectrum to power interruption also agrees well with measurement. We have found that while the B→X transition in S₂ is the solely responsible for the spectrum, the presence of S₃ is critical to the understanding of the discharge.