Dimension reduction of non-equilibrium plasma kinetic models using principal component analysis

• Published in: Plasma sources science & technology Vol. 24; no. 2; pp. 25004 - 14
• Main Authors: Peerenboom, Kim, Parente, Alessandro, Kozák, Tomáš, Bogaerts, Annemie, Degrez, Gérard
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: IOP Publishing 01.04.2015
• Subjects: Carbon dioxide; Carbon monoxide; Cobalt; Conversion; dimension reduction; Ionization; Manifolds (mathematics); Mathematical models; non-equilibrium; plasma chemistry; plasma simulation; Principal component analysis; Reduction
• ISSN: 0963-0252; 1361-6595
• DOI: 10.1088/0963-0252/24/2/025004

The chemical complexity of non-equilibrium plasmas poses a challenge for plasma modeling because of the computational load. This paper presents a dimension reduction method for such chemically complex plasmas based on principal component analysis (PCA). PCA is used to identify a low-dimensional manifold in chemical state space that is described by a small number of parameters: the principal components. Reduction is obtained since continuity equations only need to be solved for these principal components and not for all the species. Application of the presented method to a CO2 plasma model including state-to-state vibrational kinetics of CO2 and CO demonstrates the potential of the PCA method for dimension reduction. A manifold described by only two principal components is able to predict the CO2 to CO conversion at varying ionization degrees very accurately.