Conversions and selectivities in cold plasma partial oxidation of methane

Abstract In the present work, the application of dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) cold plasma technology for the partial oxidation of methane was systematically studied. Conversion of the reactants and selectivities were measured using an elaborate product analysis from a recent work by Müller et al. varying the reactant ratio in the feed, the mole fraction of the inert carrier gas argon in the feed, and the specific energy input at operating conditions close to ambient. The results from 20 new experiments carried out in the present work complement 23 previous experiments and provide an unprecedented comprehensive quantitative data set. This extends the available knowledge of partial oxidation of methane in DBD cold plasma considerably and is useful for testing mechanistic models.