Heat Transfer from Thermal Plasmas to Neighboring Walls or Electrodes

A successful exploitation of thermal plasmas in the field of high temperature chemistry and material processing requires a fundamental understanding of the interaction between a plasma and matter in the condensed phase. In this paper some of the basic aspects involved in the heat exchange between a thermal plasma and solids or liquids are reviewed, with emphasis on recent experimental results obtained at the University of Minnesota. These results refer to plasma heat transfer situations with and without electric current flow to or from the surface under consideration. For both situations methods have been developed which allow fairly accurate measurements of local heat fluxes over a wide range of plasma parameters.