Abstract
Study of the injection of liquid sprays into thermal plasmas has a number of important applications. Examples include Thermal Plasma Chemical Vapor Deposition (TPCVD), hazardous waste destruction and, ICP atomic emission or mass spectrometry in analytical chemistry. The spray is comprised of thousands of single liquid droplets. To calculate the mass, momentum and energy exchange between the gas and the spray, one must account for a distribution of droplet sizes, velocities, and temperatures. For some cases, droplet collision and breakup also are important. This paper developed a model for the transport and evaporation of liquid droplets sprayed into an radio frequency inductively coupled plasma (rf-ICP). The model considers the evolution of spray distribution function as the liquid spray travels through the discharge. Coupling calculations between plasma gas and water spray is performed for a typical rf-ICP torch. This model is capable of predicting the thermal and dynamic behavior of the liquid spray and its effects on the plasma gas for different rf-ICP operating conditions.