Combined Thermal Imaging and Radiative Modelling for Temperature Reconstruction of a CO2 Plasma Jet

Conference poster, 2026

To mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, high-temperature industries must transition toward electrified and more sustainable heating technologies. For some processes, replacing fossil-fired burners with plasma-based heat sources represents a promising pathway, though implementation requires careful small-scale evaluation. In this work, radiative characteristics of a 50 kWel non-transferred CO2 plasma torch operating in open air are investigated using thermal infrared imaging and radiative intensity measurements. The two measurements are combined with detailed spectral modelling of the gas radiation to determine the temperature distribution within the plasma jet. The model accounts for emission and absorption by CO2 within the thermal camera’s detection range (6.8–17 µm) and accounts for the spectral properties of the optics and detector sensitivity. Results demonstrate a possibility of using thermal imaging to set the camera counts distribution and, in combination with intensity measurements and detailed modelling, relate it to the temperature field distribution of the plasma jet. The proposed approach enables non-intrusive, spatially resolved temperature diagnostics for electrified high-temperature applications.