Reaction pathways of producing and losing particles in atmospheric pressure methane nanosecond pulsed needle-plane discharge plasma

In this work, a two-dimensional fluid model is built up to numerically investigate the reaction pathways of producing and losing particles in atmospheric pressure methane nanosecond pulsed needle-plane discharge plasma. The calculation results indicate that the electron collisions with CH4 are the key pathways to produce the neutral particles CH2 and CH as well as the charged particles e and CH3+. CH3, H-2, H, C2H2, and C2H4 primarily result from the reactions between the neutral particles and CH4. The charge transfer reactions are the significant pathways to produce CH4+, C2H2+, and C2H4+. As to the neutral species CH and H and the charged species CH3+, the reactions between themselves and CH4 contribute to substantial losses of these particles. The ways responsible for losing CH3, H-2, C2H2, and C2H4 are CH3+H -> CH4, H-2+CH -> CH2+H, CH4+ +C2H2 -> C2H2+ +CH4, and CH4+ +C2H4 -> C2H4+ +CH4, respectively. Both electrons and C2H4+ are consumed by the dissociative electron-ion recombination reactions. The essential reaction pathways of losing CH4+ and C2H2+ are the charge transfer reactions. (C) 2018 Author(s).