Abstract:
Metals are generally produced from ores. The extraction processes involve carbon in one form or other, due to thermodynamic advantages. The extraction process emits a lot of detrimental CO2, responsible for the greenhouse effect. Hydrogen gas couldn't replace carbon due to thermodynamic limitations. On the other hand, hydrogen plasma contains thermodynamically excited atomic, ionic, and excited states of hydrogen. These excited species present in hydrogen plasma can reduce almost all metal oxides even at lower temperatures. This paper reports the thermodynamic analysis of hydrogen plasma and its advantages to the reduction of different metal oxides to metals and alloys, e,g. Iron, Copper, Cobalt, FeCo alloy and CuNi alloy.