Study of the Composition of a Plasma of Dry Air Contaminated by Al2O3, CO, Fe2O3 and SiO2

This paper concerns the calculation of equilibrium composition of plasma mixture Air Fe2O3, SiO2, Al2O3 and CO in temperatures range 1000 K to 6000 K. We supposed that the plasma is at atmospheric pressure and at local thermodynamic equilibrium (ETL). In the Saharan zone, the aerosols are proven from desert dust and biomass fires. They are essentially composed of oxides of silicon, calcium, iron, aluminum and carbonaceous elements from biomass. Thus, air circuit breakers often operate in a polluted environment without specific protection. They can have abnormal behaviors and failures of cuts. We used Gibbs free energy minimization method to access the different numerical densities of chemical species as a function of temperature. These data are very important to calculate thermodynamic properties, transport coefficients and modeling electrical arc in circuit breakers. The results show that the dust brings many particles which have low dissociation and ionization energies. This leads to an increase in metallic elements and a strong increase in the numerical density of electrons which could have a detrimental effect during the current cut-off phase with the increase in the electrical conductivity of the plasma.