Electrical discharges in gases or plasmas allow dissociation and conversion of molecular precursors, such as methane, at relatively low temperature. In a steady-state reactor geometry, the reaction conversion has been suggested to be dependent on basic process parameters, such as residence time, which, in turn, is a function of reactor volume and gas flow rate, and power. Here, we show, through a combined experimental and modeling study, that, for a plasma-based steady-state reactor, conversion is dependent on gas flow rate and power, but essentially independent of volume. A critical part of the experiments was to confine the plasma volume so that the power and volume could be controlled separately, and a critical part of the modeling was to segment the reactor into a volume containing filamentary discharges and a volume containing an afterglow to capture the spatial heterogeneity of our dielectric barrier discharge. The resulting similarity law for the conversion is consistent with the idea of energy density for a plasma process, but shows how such a reaction scheme is distinct from other chemical approaches.

中文翻译：

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基于等离子体的稳态流动过程的反应转化与反应器体积无关

气体或等离子体中的放电使分子前驱物（例如甲烷）在相对较低的温度下解离和转化。在稳态反应器的几何形状中，已经提出反应转化取决于基本的工艺参数，例如停留时间，其进而是反应器体积和气体流速以及功率的函数。在这里，我们通过组合的实验和模型研究表明，对于基于等离子体的稳态反应器，转化率取决于气体流速和功率，但基本上与体积无关。实验的关键部分是限制等离子体的体积，以便可以分别控制功率和体积，建模的关键部分是将反应堆分成包含丝状放电的空间和包含余辉的空间，以捕获介电势垒放电的空间异质性。所产生的转化相似性定律与等离子工艺的能量密度思想相一致，但是表明了这种反应方案与其他化学方法的不同之处。