value. During this phase, as the temperature of ZnO particles increases the dissociation process and
proceeds at a faster rate until the entire ZnO mass is exhausted. During the initial heating phase, the
reactor is gradually heated to 1560 K. The gradual heating results in lesser thermal expansion and
therefore lesser stresses. The sensible heating is done by varying the input power through the aperture
from 0 to 4 kW for about 3400 s as shown in Fig. 3 (a). The power input is assumed to be proportional to
the square root of flow time. The cavity temperature increases gradually and attains a maximum value of
1825 K at 5025s as shown in Fig. 3(b). The rate of rise of cavity temperature dropped with time due to the
increase in reaction heat and re-radiation loss.