Characterization of a filamentary discharge ignited in a gliding arc plasmatron operated in nitrogen flow

Abstract A gliding arc plasmatron (GAP) is a promising warm plasma source for the use in gas conversion applications but lacks an understanding of the plasma dynamics. In this paper, the gliding arc plasma conditions of a GAP operated with nitrogen flow (10 slm) are characterized using optical emission spectroscopy (OES) and numerical simulation. A simultaneously two-wavelength OES method and Abel inversion of the measured images with a spatial resolution of 19.6 μm are applied. The collisional radiative model used in this study includes Coulomb collisions of electrons. An iterative method of plasma parameter determination is applied. The determined values of the electric field up to 49 Td and electron density up to 2.5∙10^15 cm-3 fit well to the plasma parameters received with different diagnostics methods in comparable plasma sources. Additionally, the electric current, which is calculated using the determined reduced electric field and electron density, is compared with the measured one.