Oxidation of Chloroform in a Gliding-Arc Plasma: Observation of Molecular Vibrations

This paper presents a direct comparison of the vibrational spectra between quantum mechanistic calculation and ultrashort laser pulses (USLP) spectrometer for chloroform oxidation. The chloroform decomposition was conducted in the presence of oxygen by using a gliding-arc plasma. In agreement with the prediction from both ab initio density functional theory calculation and USLP spectra analysis, it shows that the early step of the chloroform decomposition by oxygen follows a mechanism of CHCl₃ + O₂ rarr CCl₃OOH rarr COCl₂ + OH + Cl.