Study of CO2 recombination kinetics

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of thermochemical data obtained in a high temperature recombining CO ₂ mixture at atmospheric pressure. For the analysis, three kinetic models taken from the literature are used. All models appear to capture the measured CO density evolution. However, they all underpredict the measured CO ₂ density evolution by a multiplicative factor of roughly five. Modifications to the baseline models are considered. A Monte-Carlo analysis is used to simultaneously vary several rates, and as part of an effort to modify the baseline models in as minimal a way as possible. Furthermore, the Monte-Carlo analysis allows us to identify different modifications to the baseline models that result in good agreement with experiment. This offers a level flexibility in the choice of modifications made, in order to account for prior knowledge of certain reaction rates that may be well known. In several cases, the suggested modifications require an increase of the rate of CO ₂ recombination by a factor of approximately 10. We argue that such an increase could be explained by recombination through excited states of CO ₂ .