CO(B ¹Σ⁺→A ¹Π) Angstrom System for Gas Temperature Measurements in CO₂ Containing Plasmas

CO₂ containing plasmas are of growing interest for greenhouse gas remediation and dry gas reforming. In this paper, we show that the optical emission spectrum of CO(B-A) transition can be used for gas temperature determination in CO₂ containing plasmas. The study was performed in a packed-bed reactor and compared with previously published results for a MW discharge. The CO emission is mainly produced by direct electron excitation from ground state CO. The rotational temperature is determined by a fitting algorithm of the CO(B-A) (0-1) spectrum and the accuracy of the deduced rotational temperature is shown to be better than 30 K. Meanwhile, we also compared the results with the widely used Boltzmann plots of the CO(B-A) (0-1). The rotational lines corresponding to Q(18–24) yield accurately the gas temperature for spectra with a resolution in excess of 0.05 nm FWHM. Rotational lines with N < 18 cannot be used due to the overlap of rotational lines from different branches unless a spectral resolution of at least 5 pm is used.