In the plasmotron everything is different. Plasma made from hydrogen has a temperature of 5000 degrees. The hydrogen plasma jet carries its enormous energy into a special reactor to which methane is fed. The methane is mixed vigorously with the hydrogen and in the course of one ten-thousandth of a second more than 75 per cent of the methane changes into acetylene.

    Isn't that ideal? We should say so! But alas, there is always a hitch somewhere. If we leave the acetylene for an extra instant in the high temperature zone of the plasma it begins to decompose. Hence the temperature must be lowered swiftly to a safe level. There are different ways of accomplishing this, but it is the main technical difficulty. So far only 15 per cent of the acetylene formed can be saved from dissociation. But even that is not so bad!

    A method of decomposing cheap liquid hydrocarbons plasmochemically to form acetylene, ethylene, and propylene has been developed in the laboratory.

    A very important problem that has still to be coped with is the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen. The chemical production of nitrogen-containing compounds, e.g. ammonia, is a very laborious, involved and expensive operation. A few decades ago attempts were made to synthesize nitrogen oxides electrically on an industrial scale, but the economics of the process was too low. Here also plasmochemistry holds much more promise.
 

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