Ionic composition of a humid air plasma under ionizing radiation

Abstract

A kinetic model is proposed for ion–molecular processes involving charged particles of a humid air plasma produced by a fast electron beam. The model includes more than 600 processes involving electrons and 41 positive and 14 negative ions, including hydrated ions H₃O⁺ (H₂O)_n and O₂⁻(H₂O)_n with n = 1, 2, …, 12. The energy costs of production of electron–ion pairs and electronic and vibrational (for water molecules, also rotational) excitation of molecules are calculated in nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor, air, and humid air. A method is proposed for calculating the energy costs in mixtures by the calculation data in pure gases. The evolution of the plasma composition is studied by the numerical solution of a system of 56 time-dependent balance equations for the number of charged particles of plasma by the fourth-order Runge–Kutta method. The steady-state composition of plasma is determined by solving nonlinear steady-state balance equations for the ionization rates of humid air from 10 to 10¹⁶ cm^–3/s and the fraction of water molecules from 10^–3% to 1.5%. It is established that, for water vapor content (the ratio of the number density of water molecules to the total number density of air molecules) of 0.015–1.5% in air at atmospheric pressure and room temperature, the main ion species are two types of positive ions H₃O⁺ (H₂O)_n with the number of water molecules n = 5, 6 and three species of negative ions O₂⁻(H₂O)_n with n = 5, 8, 9.