Analysis of the products of a negative corona discharge in a N₂-CH₄ mixture with added CO₂ used as a laboratory mimic of a prebiotic atmosphere

Mazankova, V.; Torokova, L.; Moravsky, L.; Matejcik, S.; Trunec, D.; Navratil, Z. and Mason, N. J. (2018). Analysis of the products of a negative corona discharge in a N₂-CH₄ mixture with added CO₂ used as a laboratory mimic of a prebiotic atmosphere. Contributions to Plasma Physics, 58(10) pp. 995–1004.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/ctpp.201700089

Abstract

A negative corona discharge operating at atmospheric pressure has been used to initiate chemical reactions in a gaseous mixture of nitrogen, methane, and carbon dioxide. Such a mixture simulates the composition of the early Earth's atmosphere. This work extends our previous experimental studies of the chemistry of prebiotic atmospheres generated in an atmospheric‐pressure glow discharge. The present work is devoted to the study of the role of CO₂ in prebiotic atmospheric chemistry. The gas mixture was composed of nitrogen with 2–4% methane and 1% CO₂. The corona discharge was characterized by electrical measurements and optical emission spectroscopy. The reaction products from the discharge were further analysed by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. The composition of solid products deposited on the electrode tip was obtained by energy dispersive X‐ray (EDX) analysis. The specific input energy was altered during the experiments, and the concentration of all products was found to increase with its increase. It is further shown that while the addition of the CO₂ admixture leads to the generation of CO and H₂O, no other compounds containing oxygen were detected. The energy yields of products were calculated, and good agreement was found with the values obtained in previous experiments.

Viewing alternatives

Metrics

Item Actions

Export

You can export this page using these formats Digital Object Identifier - DOI