Abstract / Summary
Methane ( C H 4 ) conversion using plasma technology is of significant interest for understanding C H 4 activation pathways, reaction mechanisms and carbon chemistry, while enabling the production of value-added carbon containing compounds and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. In this study a two dimensional fluid model was employed to investigate the plasma-assisted CH 4 conversion using CH 4 /O 2 /Ar (80:15:5) gas mixture in a capacitive coupled plasma (CCP) reactor. The spatial evolution of carbon-containing species, including C 2 H 2 , C 2 H 2 + , CO 2 and CO 2 + were analyzed over a gas temperature range of 300–700 K with 100 K increments. Simulations were performed for a CCP reactor with electrode radius 15 cm and inter-electrode gap of 3 cm, operating at a pressure of 0.1 Torr and a radio frequency of 13.56 MHz. The adopted two dimensional fluid model solved the coupled continuity, momentum and energy conservation equations together with Poisson's equation to accurately describe plasma behavior. The radial and axial distributions of electrons temperature, electrons number density, electric field and carbon containing species were systematically investigated as a function of gas temperature. The computational results demonstrated that gas temperature strongly influences plasma kinetics, C H 4 decomposition pathways and the spatial distribution of reactive‑carbon containing compounds leading to significant variations in the formations of C 2 H 2 , C 2 H 2 + , CO 2 and CO 2 + . These findings provide fundamental insight into plasma-assisted C H 4 conversion and establish a computational framework for optimizing CCP operating conditions toward efficient industrial-scale greenhouse gas conversion and value-added chemical production.