Simulation of Plasma Characteristic Behavior in a Radio Frequency Packed Bed Dielectric Barrier Discharge Reactor

This article mainly studies the evolution of discharge process and plasma generation in a radio frequency (RF) packed bed dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) reactor. A 2-D model of the RF packed bed DBD reactor is developed to study the plasma characteristic behavior based on the plasma fluid simulation. Under the argon discharge atmosphere, the pressure, the RF voltage, and the packing bead material all have significant effects on generation and evolution of the plasma in the reactor. The addition of packing beads can make the reactor generate greater local field intensity and more plasma because the beads can be polarized by an external potential, which means that discharge plasma can be generated at lower energy consumption. As the RF voltage of electrode and dielectric constant of dielectric beads increase, the development speed of streamer propagation and discharge process is accelerated, leading to the acceleration of plasma generation. During the evolution, the discharge process will evolve from a surface discharge to a local filamentary discharge then to a streamer discharge. Therefore, this study will have a crucial impact on the cognition of plasma behavior in RF packed bed DBD reactors for plasma technology applications.