Computational fluid dynamics analysis of cold plasma carrier gas injected into a fluid using level set method

A promising application of plasma medicine is to treat living cells and tissues with cold plasma. In cold plasmas, the fraction of neutrals dominates, so the carrier gas could be considered the main component. In many realistic situations, the treated cells are covered by a fluid. The present paper developed models to determine the temperature of the fluid at the positions of the treated cells. Specifically, the authors developed a three-phase-interaction model which was coupled with heat transfer to examine the injection of the helium carrier gas into water and to investigate both the fluid dynamics and heat transfer output variables, such as temperature, in three phases, i.e., air, helium gas, and water. Our objective was to develop a model to perform complete fluid dynamics and heat transfer computations to determine the temperature at the surface of living cells. Different velocities and plasma temperatures were also investigated using finite element method, and the model was built using the COMSOL MULTIPHYSICS software. Using the current model to simulate plasma injection into such systems, the authors were able to investigate the temperature distributions in the domain, as well as the surface and bottom boundary of the medium in which cells were cultured. The temperature variations were computed at small time intervals to analyze the temperature increase in cell targets that could be highly temperature sensisitve. Furthermore, the authors were able to investigate the volume of the plasma plume and its effects on the average temperature of the medium layer/domain. Variables such as temperature and velocity at the cell layer could be computed, and the variations due to different plume sizes could be determined. The current models would be very useful for future design of plasma medicine devices and procedures involving cold plasmas.