Quantify material-dependent catalytic wall recombination

Determine the influence of material-dependent catalytic recombination probabilities for atomic oxygen at the quartz reactor wall on the atomic-oxygen balance and CO yield of the vortex-stabilized microwave CO2 plasma reactor.

Background

Catalytic recombination of atomic oxygen at the reactor wall is omitted from the present model because prior modeling and the simulated species distributions suggest that only a limited O-atom flux reaches the quartz surface.

Nevertheless, the authors explicitly identify the material dependence of wall-recombination probabilities as an unresolved source of uncertainty. Quantifying these probabilities would establish whether surface reactions materially affect the predicted oxygen balance and CO production.