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Recent experiments by Groen et al (2019 Plasma Sources Sci. Technol. 28 075016) on CO2 activation at high translational temperature (3500 T-g < 5500 K) are analyzed with a self-consistent code describing the vibrational kinetics of reacting CO2 together with CO and O-2 and the corresponding electron Boltzmann equation. The kinetics results are compared with the corresponding thermodynamics values. This comparison shows that the major components of the mixture, i.e. CO and O can be described by the thermodynamic approach, while the other minor components present large deviation from equilibrium. A qualitative agreement is found between experimental and theoretical values of electron density, E/N and electron temperature in both diffuse and contracted regimes. The theoretical vibrational distributions as well as the corresponding electron energy distribution functions present non-equilibrium effects even at the considered high translational temperature.
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