A THEORETICAL PREDICTION OF HYDROGEN MOLECULE DISSOCIATION-RECOMBINATION RATES INCLUDING AN ACCURATE TREATMENT OF INTERNAL STATE NONEQUILIBRIUM EFFECTS

This paper presents the results of a detailed study of dissociation and recombination of H2 over the temperature range 1000 to 5000 K. The chemical processes are modeled by solving the master equation for the concentrations of the full set of rovibration states. All of the state-to-state energy transfer rate coefficients required by the master equation are evaluated by the quasiclassical trajectory method using a potential energy surface which is a fit to ab initio electronic structure calculations. The analysis of the results of the master equation to obtain the phenomenological rate coefficients was carried out using several techniques. This is required because there is a mixture of third bodies and their concentrations change as the reaction proceeds. The methods based on one-way fluxes are not reliable, while the methods based upon an eigenvalue solution of the linearized master equation are in reasonable agreement with our preferred method, which is based on fitting the concentrations from a two component master equation. The results from various methods of determining the phenomenological rate coefficient for H2 as a third body are in good agreement with experimental estimates. The recombination rate coefficients are most sensitive to the collision induced dissociation rates of initial states with moderate values of vibrational and rotational quantum numbers. A comparison of the orbiting resonance theory to the accurate results shows that this simple model is not valid under the conditions of the present study.