Investigation on the pulse-modulated ratio frequency discharge and its application on the NOX removal

Summary form only given. In recent years, the pulse-modulated ratio frequency (rf) discharge at atmospheric pressure have drawn intensive attention^{1, 2} because they possess not only the trait of high density of reactive species of rf voltage power sources but also good control of plasma parameters, particularly of overheating. In this work, the gas breakdown mechanisms, especially the roles of metastable species and the gas temperature in atmospheric pressure pulse-modulated rf barrier discharges were studied numerically using a self-consistent fluid model. The results firstly indicated that the electrons are produced mainly by energetic electron impact background neutrals during the pulse-on period while during the pulse-off period seed electrons for the next breakdown are overwhelmingly produced by the ionization associated with metastable species, and the molecular metastables play a decisive role in providing seed electrons compared to the atomic ones 3 . Secondly, it was shown that the gas temperature could be controlled effectively with the modulated pulse source, and the contributions from the Joule heating, elastic collisions, ion thermal flow and heavy particle reactions were also given and compared. Moreover, the application of this kind of power source on the NOX removal was also studied.