For the evaluation of transport in high density plasmas numerical models have been developed in which simultaneously the conservation laws for mass, momentum and energy are solved. For high density plasmas, which are not too far from equilibrium the commonly used thermodynamic quantities are, electron temperature T-e, electron density n(e), heavy particle temperature and neutral density (or pressure). In this contribution an alternative formulation is described in which the plasma state is described by electron density n(e) and total pressure p and two non-equilibrium parameters : the deviation from Saha equilibrium of the neutral ground state (delta b(1) = n(1)/n(1)(Saha)-1) and the deviation from thermal equilibrium between electrons and heavy particles delta Theta = 1-T-h/T-e. The latter two parameters are zero in local thermodynamic equilibrium. The advantage of this formulation is, that the transport coefficients and radiative properties can be reformulated as function of mainly n(e) (at constant pressure), as the influences of non zero delta b(1) and delta Theta are small or can be explicitly given. As a result a simpler approximate formulation of the transport problem can be obtained. As an example the procedure is illustrated for atmospheric argon plasmas and for one aspect a comparison is made with work from e.g. E. Pfender.+u?