Eur. Phys. J. D (2012) 66: 205
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2012-30147-8

Regular Article

A phenomenological approach for the transport properties of air plasmas

¹ Dipartimento di Ingegneria e Fisica dell’Ambiente, Università della Basilicata, Via dell’Ateneo Lucano, 10, 85100 Potenza, Italy
² CNR-IMIP Bari, Via Amendola 122/D, 70126 Bari, Italy
³ Dipartimento di Chimica, Università di Bari, Via Orabona, 4, 70126 Bari, Italy

^a e-mail: antonio.dangola@unibas.it

Received: 3 March 2012
Received in final form: 21 May 2012
Published online: 16 August 2012

Abstract

The transport coefficients of Earth atmosphere in equilibrium, in wide temperature and pressure ranges, have been calculated using collision integrals derived in a phenomenological approach, accounting also for resonant processes contributions. This approach could be a valuable tool in the calculation of complete data sets for complex mixtures, including interactions hardly handled in the accurate multi-potential methods. A systematic comparison with transport coefficients obtained using an old data set, widely used in literature, has been carried out to estimate the reliability of the proposed approach in evaluating transport cross sections.