Plasma Burner Torch:
In many industrial processes today, natural gas-driven flames are used to generate the process heat. In order to achieve certain temperature limits, the past international climate conferences have agreed to make CO2-generating processes much more expensive worldwide, so that in a few years the above-mentioned warming tasks will no longer be able to cover their costs.
In many industrial heating processes, a fundamentally different heating method can be used (dielectric, resistive, inductive heating, see previous examples). In some other processes there is no real generic alternative to a "flame".
A plasma-based flame (plasma burner torch) can be a solution in this case. A process gas (H2, CO2, N2, O2 , Ar, air, ...) is streamed through a pipe arrangement (0.05 m - 1 m or more in diameter) at atmospheric pressure. This gas is excited in a special arrangement from the outside, without contact, by means of medium-frequency - high-frequency inductive power input to form a plasma or plasma flame. An interesting aspect is that the above-mentioned process gas can be "recycled", i.e. returned to the process as recycling. In fact, nothing "burns" in this process, despite the fact that the heat is generated in a flame.
TRUMPF Hüttinger is currently developing process power supplies and power couplings that will soon replace heat generation using natural gas flames, up to the megawatt range. These are used in a variety of ways, e.g., in metal production or metal recycling, in the chemical and glass-producing industries.