Computational Physics of Low-Temperature Plasma Simulation
Chris Schoutrop defended his PhD thesis at the department of Applied Physics and Science Education on February 1st.
Wind and solar power is highly variable. In order to address this variability, these energy sources need a method to store excess energy. This project investigates breaking apart CO2 into CO and O, the produced CO can be used to produce synthetic fuels like gas. This way we can store large amounts of energy in a CO2-neutral way.
To gain insight into dissociating CO2 with plasmas, computer simulations are essential. However, performing such simulations is expensive, especially for detailed models. The main objective of this thesis is to improve the speed and accuracy of plasma simulations.
Chopped plasma
One of the most important equations in such models describes flow, diffusion and chemical reactions. Here, we dived into the mathematical details underlying the diffusion part of this model. To solve the equations we chopped the plasma into small pieces, solve a simpler equation in each small piece, and then link them back together. In these steps we have achieved considerable improvements in reliability.
Combined plasma components
The physics resulting from a simulation is only as complete as the physics that was included in the model. To improve on this, we have found a clever way to combine components of the plasma. With our new method physical quantities such as conservation of mass and charge are represented more accurately. In a later stage of the research we developed a method to further improve on this method, by combining aspects of equilibrium and non-equilibrium plasmas.
Title of PhD thesis: Computational Physics of Low-Temperature Plasma Simulation. Supervisors: Jan van Dijk and Jan Ten Thije Boonkkamp.