研究室紹介

Thermal plasmas have simply been used as a high temperature source. This indicates that thermal plasmas may have more capabilities in material processing, especially production of high-quality and high-performance materials, if thermal plasmas are utilized effectively as chemically reactive gases. Therefore we developed the numerical analysis to investigate non-equilibrium characteristics in thermal plasmas. These results can be utilized for the nano-material synthesis as well as waste treatment using thermal plasmas. (1) Thermal plasma synthesis method was developed to synthesize lithium metal oxide as well as many kinds of nanoparticles in a short time and with few impurities. (2) DC 100%-steam plasma characteristics were investigated for the application of halogenated hydrocarbon decomposition. The developed steam plasma system is a portable light-weight plasma generation system that does not require any gas supply. The system has high energy-efficiency since cooling water is not needed. (3) Ground-engineering work on experimental missions for lunar resource utilization has been conducted. The goal of the research program is to conceptually design an experiment system for unmanned water production on the Moon, and to define essential technological breakthroughs.