The Department of Physics and the Department of Chemistry are organising a lecture where Dr Vera Mazankova will give a talk titled 'Laboratory mimic of a prebiotic atmosphere by electrical discharges in a N2-CH4 mixture with added CO2'.
Date: Tuesday 30 October
Time: 11:00
Venue: MP216
Abstract
Electrical discharges operating at atmospheric pressure have been used to initiate chemical reactions in a gaseous mixture of nitrogen (N2), methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2). Such a mixture simulates the composition of the early Earth鈥檚 prebiotic atmosphere. The present work is devoted to the study of the role of CO2 in prebiotic atmospheric chemistry. The gas mixture was composed of nitrogen with 2-4 % CH4 and 1 % CO2. The discharges were characterised by electrical measurements and optical emission spectroscopy. The reaction products from discharges were further analyzed by FTIR spectroscopy and GC-MS. The specific input energy was altered during the experiments and the concentration of all products was found to increase with its increase. It was further shown that while the addition of CO2 admixture leads to the generation of CO and H2O, no other compounds containing oxygen were detected. The energy yields of products were calculated and good agreement with energy yields obtained in previous experiments was found. A kinetic model for chemical reactions in this gaseous mixture has been developed. The model predicted production of formaldehyde, however this compound was not detected in the experiment.
Vera Mazankova was born in Vyskov in Czech Republic and obtained her Masters degree in Physics from Masaryk University in 1995 and her Doctoral degree in physical chemistry from the University of Technology in Czech Republic in 2009. She has previously worked at Brno University of Technology and Masaryk University. Dr Mazankova currently holds a position at the Faculty of Military Technology as an academic at the University of Defence and working on research in plasma chemical field at the Brno University of Technology.
