Study on behaviors of tungsten powders in radio frequency thermal plasma

This paper describes an investigational study of the spheroidization of refractory metal tungsten powders by radio frequency thermal plasma, with emphasis on the melting, solidification and growth behavior of the tungsten powder particles during the spheroidization process. The flight time and melting time of tungsten powder particles in the plasma were estimated, and the growth behavior of the tungsten powder particles was analyzed in detail by investigating the change in the average particle size before and after plasma spheroidization. The morphology and spheroidization rate were analyzed using field emission scanning electron microscopy. The flight time and melting time for tungsten powder particles with radius of 7.8 μm were calculated to be 9.3 ms and 2.9 ms, respectively. The change in powder particle size during the process showed that the growth of tungsten powder particles was mainly caused by the coalescence of droplets in the thermal plasma system. The experimental results demonstrated that the spheroidization rate can reach up to 95% under the operating conditions used in this work.