(79c) Corona Microreactor for Chemical Synthesis

Energy for the activation of novel thermodynamically stable reaction pathways is provided through electrical activation. The reduced spatial scale offered by microscale reactors intensifies the electric field from applied dc electric potentials. This leads to energy efficiency in promoting these reactions and allows stable access of all the possible non-thermal plasma regimes which have not been studied previously. Microstructured electrodes of appropriate field enhancement factor allow microplasmas to be activated in electrical parallel in any plasma regime having positive differential resistance. Tuning the electron energy distribution yields different product distributions for the case of hydrocarbon upgrading to value added products. For the case in which transient waveforms are applied, pulse duration determines deposited power in the non-thermal plasma discharge. This can be adequately characterized by dye mineralization.