Non-equilibrium Microwave Plasma for Efficient High Temperature Chemistry.

A flowing microwave plasma based methodology for converting electric energy into internal and/or translational modes of stable molecules with the purpose of efficiently driving non-equilibrium chemistry is discussed. The advantage of a flowing plasma reactor is that continuous chemical processes can be driven with the flexibility of startup times in the seconds timescale. The plasma approach is generically suitable for conversion/activation of stable molecules such as CO2, N2 and CH4.

Taming microwave plasma to beat thermodynamics in CO2 dissociation.

The strong non-equilibrium conditions provided by the plasma phase offer the opportunity to beat traditional thermal process energy efficiencies via preferential excitation of molecular vibrations. Simple molecular physics considerations are presented to explain potential dissociation pathways in plasma and their effect on energy efficiency. A common microwave reactor approach is evaluated experimentally with Rayleigh scattering and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy to assess gas temperatures (exceeding 10(4) K) and conversion degrees (up to 30%), respectively.

Modification of the collective Thomson scattering radiometer in the search for parametric decay on TEXTOR.

Strong scattering of high-power millimeter waves at 140 GHz has been shown to take place in heating and current-drive experiments at TEXTOR when a tearing mode is present in the plasma. The scattering signal is at present supposed to be generated by the parametric decay instability. Here we describe the heterodyne detection system used to characterize the newly discovered signal measured at TEXTOR, and we present spectral shapes in which the signal can appear under different conditions.

Intermediate frequency band digitized high dynamic range radiometer system for plasma diagnostics and real-time Tokamak control.

An intermediate frequency (IF) band digitizing radiometer system in the 100-200 GHz frequency range has been developed for Tokamak diagnostics and control, and other fields of research which require a high flexibility in frequency resolution combined with a large bandwidth and the retrieval of the full wave information of the mm-wave signals under investigation. The system is based on directly digitizing the IF band after down conversion. The enabling technology consists of a fast multi-giga sample analog to digital converter that has recently become available.

Development and testing of a fast Fourier transform high dynamic-range spectral diagnostics for millimeter wave characterization.

A fast Fourier transform (FFT) based wide range millimeter wave diagnostics for spectral characterization of scattered millimeter waves in plasmas has been successfully brought into operation. The scattered millimeter waves are heterodyne downconverted and directly digitized using a fast analog-digital converter and a compact peripheral component interconnect computer. Frequency spectra are obtained by FFT in the time domain of the intermediate frequency signal.