Abstract
Plasma technologies for metallurgical applications are increasingly being adopted as they have the advantages of the unique properties of plasma. Amongst the major development priorities in many metallurgical operations and the development of new materials, plasma promises improved process control, direct utilization, improved environmental compliance and increased efficiency of energy. As a result, plasma is used for a wide spectrum of applications in materials processing like waste destruction, plasma spraying, plasma cutting, plasma welding, plasma synthesis of nanopowders, iron and steel making and extractive metallurgy for recovery of precious materials. Plasma has also recently been used as a source for the future fusion reactor, where it is confined by using the magnetic field inside the doughnut-shaped vacuum vessel. The fusion reactor which is being developed is seen as a promising, clean source of energy to solve the world’s energy problem in the future as it does not use radioactive materials or pollute the air by carbon emissions. There are many challenging issues related to material constraints and plasma wall interactions which need attention as the operating environment of a fusion reactor imposes radiation damage effects. Detailed metallurgical investigation studies to select the most appropriate material are being done by many researchers. Moreover, the extremely harsh loading conditions in the fusion reactor can only be met with very diligent component design and careful selection of the best-suited material; fabricating and manufacturing techniques and efforts on develo** new techniques are being carried out globally by many researchers. In this contributory article, a few examples of plasma-based technologies developed at Institute for Plasma Research (IPR) for industrial applications are described in brief. IPR has also developed, materials, technologies for blanket and fusion reactors, high temperature superconductors (HTS) for fusion magnets and they are elucidated in the below sections.
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Joseph, A. et al. (2024). Applications of Plasma in Metallurgy and Vice-Versa: Indian Context. In: Divakar, R., Murty, S.V.S.N., Srikanth, S., Gokhale, A.A. (eds) Indian Metallurgy. Indian Institute of Metals Series. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-5060-7_19
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