Ozone Modeling Within Plasmas for Ozone Sensor Applications

Ozone (O₃) is potentially hazardous to human health and accurate prediction and measurement of this gas is essential in addressing its associated health risks. This paper presents theory to predict the levels of ozone concentration emitted from a dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma for ozone sensing applications. This is done by postulating the kinetic model for ozone generation, with a DBD plasma at atmospheric pressure in air, in the form of a set of rate equations. Rate constants are taken from the literature and previously unconsidered ozone producing hydroxyl reactions are incorporated into the work, yielding more accurate results for the concentration of ozone for sensing applications. An application of this work is that knowing levels of ozone produced within an atmospheric DBD plasma allows for ozone sensors to be more accurately tuned to the particular requirements of the plasma system.