High-Temperature Inert-Gas-Plasma Faraday-Type Magnetohydrodynamic Generator with Various Working Gases

摘要

The performance of a high-temperature inert-gas-plasma Faraday-type magnetohydrodynamic generator with various working gases (helium, argon, and Xenon) is examined numerically. In all cases, ionization instability is suppressed at a high inlet total temperature at which Coulomb collisions become dominant and the dependence of electrical conductivity on electron number density becomes weak. In the presence of ionization instability at a low inlet total temperature, the fluctuation of power output for Xenon is the smallest with a large wave number for the plasma structure. The highest enthalpy-extraction ratio is achieved for helium, which has the highest interaction parameter.