Numerical modeling and mechanism investigation of nanosecond-pulsed DBD plasma-catalytic CH<sub>4</sub> dry reforming
Jie Pan, Tong Chen, Yuan Gao, Yun Liu, Shuai Zhang, Yadi Liu, Tao Shao
Abstract
Abstract Plasma-catalytic CH 4 dry reforming is an emerging technology that takes advantage of plasma-catalysis interactions to implement the conversion of CH 4 and CO 2 into syngas and valuable chemicals. In this work, an experiment is conducted to determine the reduced electric field E / N in the numerical modeling. In addition to essential reactor parameters, catalysis characteristics are integrated into the modeling. The 3D geometry of a nanosecond (ns) pulsed DBD plasma reactor for plasma-catalytic CH 4 dry reforming is reduced into a 0D kinetics model to investigate the inherent plasma-catalysis mechanisms. The simulation results indicate that C 2 O 4 + and CH 4 + , H and O, and CH 4 ( v 13 ) are the dominant ions, radicals and vibrationally excited species, respectively. Although the reactions related to CH 4 and CO 2 consume 19.7% and 80.3% of the total electron energy, the electron energy loss caused by the CH 4 ionizations (1.3%) is distinctly higher than that caused by the CO 2 ionizations (0.4%). Surface reactions can generate a large amount of adsorbed species CH 3 (s), H(s), CO(s) and O(s). An amount of 77.2% of formaldehyde is produced by the reaction between CH 3 and O. In addition, methanol is derived from the reactions between CH 3 and OH in the pulsed dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma catalytic reforming CH 4 /CO 2 . This numerical modeling reflects the practical plasma-catalysis system and therefore should be a novel tool to further understand the complicated underlying mechanism of the ns-pulsed DBD plasma-catalytic CH 4 dry reforming.