Plasma catalysis is a promising approach to further enhance the conversion of methane into value-added products such as methanol. In this work, the mechanisms enabling the conversion of methane to CO, CO₂ and methanol enabled by plasma-enhanced catalysis were investigated. A catalyst reactor was incorporated downstream of the plasma jet to enable the separation between plasma generation and the catalyst bed. An enhancement in CH₃OH and CO₂ production was observed for the shortest distance between the plasma and catalyst compared to the plasma-only case. Plasma-enabled gas heating was shown not to be responsible for the observed synergy while a gas temperature increase as low as 30–40 K significantly impacted desorption rates of CH₃OH/C₂H₅OH on alumina particles. Correlations between molecular beam mass spectrometry (MBMS) measurements at the inlet and outlet of the catalytic reactor suggest that the observed synergistic effect was caused by radical species most likely the CH₃O₂ radical. This study shows that surface reactions induced by radicals such as alkylperoxy radicals might play an important role in surface reactions in plasma-catalysis.

等离子催化是一种很有前景的方法，可以进一步提高甲烷转化为甲醇等增值产品。在这项工作中，研究了通过等离子体增强催化将甲烷转化为 CO、CO _{2和甲醇的机制。}在等离子体射流的下游结合了催化剂反应器，以使等离子体产生和催化剂床之间能够分离。与仅有等离子体的情况相比，在等离子体和催化剂之间的最短距离下观察到CH ₃ OH 和 CO _{2的产生增加。}等离子气体加热被证明不是观察到的协同作用的原因，而气体温度升高低至 30-40 K 显着影响 CH _{3的解吸速率}氧化铝颗粒上的OH/C ₂ H ₅ OH。催化反应器入口和出口处的分子束质谱 (MBMS) 测量结果之间的相关性表明，观察到的协同效应是由最有可能是 CH ₃ O ₂自由基的自由基种类引起的。该研究表明，由烷基过氧自由基等自由基诱导的表面反应可能在等离子体催化的表面反应中发挥重要作用。