Thermal plasmas: production

Thermal plasmas (see ), at or near atmospheric pressure (i.e. from 10 to 500 kPa), can be produced at powers ranging from a few hundred watts, for micro-cutting for example, to just over a hundred megawatts for direct-current metallurgical furnaces. They therefore cover a very wide range of applications: cutting or welding of metal parts, surface treatments and deposits, extractive metallurgy, metal remelting-purification, spheroidization and particle purification, chemical analysis, heating of casting tundishes, chemistry, synthesis of nanometric or ultra-fine powders, manufacture of shaped parts, waste treatment.

In this presentation, we describe the different types of torch used industrially in the above applications.

For further information on thermal plasmas, and in particular on plasma theory, the reader is invited to consult the reference in the bibliography in this database, by the same author: Thermal plasmas: fundamental aspects.