Formation of surface ionization waves in a plasma enhanced packed bed reactor for catalysis applications

Plasma enhanced packed bed reactors (PE-PBRs) intrinsically have complex geometries which makes it difficult to apply conventional scaling laws. For example, controlling the manner of discharge propagation between the micro-discharges (MDs) that occur between dielectrics in PE-PBRs and surface ionization waves (SIWs) that propagate along the dielectrics would aid in selectivity during plasma catalysis. An important parameter in that optimization is the pulse power format. In this work, we investigated the role of applied voltage amplitude and polarity on time resolved dynamics in an atmospheric pressure dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) operating in helium having surface topology resembling PE-PBRs using phase and space resolved optical emission spectroscopy (PROES). To enable systematic studies, the DBD uses an array of dielectric semi-spheres imaged through a top transparent electrode and imaged between the two electrodes from the side. The results were compared with 2-dimensional modeling. We identified three discharge mechanisms: filamentary micro-discharges (F-MDs) in the volume (the space between the surface of the dielectrics and the counter electrode), surface micro-discharges (S-MDs) between the dielectric semi-spheres near their contact points, and SIWs over the curved or flat dielectric surfaces. At the lowest voltages, only F-MDs are generated, once in each half cycle. At intermediate voltages, SIWs also appear which transform into S-MDs at the contact points. When voltage is further increased, several additional pulses are observed, which generate S-MDs at the contact points or a combination F-MDs and S-MDs. The voltage amplitude determines the frequency of these pulses. Modeling results show variations in plasma density and electron temperature for each of the three mechanisms which, in turn, impact production of reactive species.