THE EFFECT OF DIFFERENT REGIMES OF OPERATION ON PARAMETERS OF A WATER-VORTEX STABILIZED ELECTRIC ARC

The aim of the present paper is to make conclusions about behaviour of the water-vortex stabilized plasma torch under different regimes of operation and radiation models involved. For this purpose we calculated steady states of such arc for the currents 300-600 A assuming two different radiation models, and several radial positions of the phase transition between water and vapour in the discharge chamber which cannot be measured in experiments. Deviations from local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE) within the arc column are estimated due to the criteria for kinetic equilibrium and space temperature gradients.