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Topic: Nitric oxide to Nitric dioxide conversion with UV  (Read 1786 times)

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Offline Soso

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Nitric oxide to Nitric dioxide conversion with UV
« on: October 09, 2019, 06:35:37 PM »
Hi,

We know the interaction of NO2 with UV makes NO: NO2+UV ---->NO.

Lets say we have a 1000cm3 cylindrical chamber (base*height=50cm2 * 20cm) with [NO2]=1000ppm inside, balanced in CO2. We shine UV beam (with diameter of ~50cm2 from the chamber base) into the chamber which has Sapphire windows (transparent to UV). How long does it take to make all NO2 molecules in the chamber into NO?

I do NOT need an exact number for my question. I simply need to understand what equation governs on this process? How fast/slow the process is? Is it in range of ~2s or 20 s?


Thanks,
Soso

Offline Corribus

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Re: Nitric oxide to Nitric dioxide conversion with UV
« Reply #1 on: October 10, 2019, 10:05:51 AM »
Generally speaking, reaction events are probabilistic. Even in a magic world without equilibrium, and ignoring the possibility of side products, there's not a defined amount of time, t, after which every molecule in a sample is consumed to form products. Reaction kinetics are determined by rate laws and rate constants. From these values, which are largely determined empirically, you can predict the concentration of a reactant as a function of time. But this value typically approaches an equilibrium value asymptotically, meaning that if your criterion is for every molecule of a reactant to be consumed, the answer is that it will never happen in a precisely defined amount of time.

Photochemistry is a little different from the case described above because one of your reactants (the photons) is present in essentially infinite amount. This means that many photochemical reactions tend to be "zero order", and the concentration of reactant, barring something weird going on, is linear. Do note that photochemical reactions are still fundamentally probabilistic, but because the probability of a reaction event does not include the concentration-dependent probability of a collision, then the rate is more or less constant and the concentration of reactant decreases linearly. The slope of the line depends on such things as the molecular absorptivity and the efficiency of internal photophysical processes. Note that if the photon is only providing an activation energy but a collision with another reactant is still required, then the zero-order assumption may not be the case. Therefore you have to know a little bit about the reaction mechanism before you can make assumptions.

You may find this interesting:

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/ed074p1303
What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?  - Richard P. Feynman

Offline Soso

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Re: Nitric oxide to Nitric dioxide conversion with UV
« Reply #2 on: October 10, 2019, 01:15:07 PM »
Thank you very much.
Let me modify my question then: I have 1000 ppm NO2 in the chamber and will shine UV into it for 5 seconds, should I expect NO2 concentration reduction because of this 5 s light exposure or it is too short for reaction to happen?

Offline Enthalpy

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Re: Nitric oxide to Nitric dioxide conversion with UV
« Reply #3 on: October 11, 2019, 10:40:37 AM »
The chamber contains 45µmol of NO2 under standard conditions. If the lamp made one photon per electron and the gas reacted one NO2 molecule per photon, then 0.86A*5s would suffice, BUT:

UV LED make a bit less than 1 photon per electron, while discharge lamps make a few photons per electron.

The absorption of UV by NO2 is not huge. Data there (nice of them) in cm2/molecule
http://satellite.mpic.de/spectral_atlas
http://satellite.mpic.de/spectral_atlas/cross_sections/Nitrogen%20oxides/NO2.spc
http://joseba.mpch-mainz.mpg.de/spectral_atlas_data/cross_sections/Nitrogen%20oxides/NO2_JohnstonGraham(1974)_298K_190-420nm.txt
http://joseba.mpch-mainz.mpg.de/spectral_atlas_data/cross_sections_plots/Nitrogen%20oxides/NO2_203-293K_log.jpg
so at 360nm (is it?) the absorption section is 5×10-19cm2/molecule and all the NO2 in your chamber cumulates 13.5cm2 section, as compared with 50cm2. At best, 1 of 4 photons is absorbed, or 1 of 2 if UV is reflected. This increases if skewing the beam towards highly reflective side walls.

Absorption doesn't mean that NO is formed everytime. I don't have such data. Do you?

CO2 looks very transparent in the UV as compared with NO2 diluted /1000
http://joseba.mpch-mainz.mpg.de/spectral_atlas_data/cross_sections_plots/Carbon-oxides/CO2_115-300nm_log.jpg
so it wouldn't change the outcome.

NO spectra stop around 230nm, so depending on your wavelength, I can't tell if produced NO will kill the reaction
http://satellite.mpic.de/spectral_atlas/cross_sections/Nitrogen%20oxides/NO.spc

As NO2 disappears, the sought UV absorption drops.

What are the wavelength, source intensity, fraction of light injected in the chamber? The figures you give are just in the zone not easily decidable.
And is the reaction NO :rarrow: NO2 as in the title, or NO2 :rarrow: NO as in the text?

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