Carbon monoxide's Impact on Titan's Atmosphere

Influence of CO on Titan atmospheric reactivity

Authors:

Fleury et al

Abstract:

The atmosphere of Titan is mainly composed of N2 and CH4 which are the source of various CxHyNz photochemical volatiles products. Laboratory simulations of the Titan’s atmospheric reactivity were mainly interested in the study of the complex organic chemistry which leads to the formation of analogues of Titan’s aerosols, called tholins. These studies were mainly interested in the reactivity of the N2/CH4 gaseous mixture and with the primary products of reactions without oxygen. However, the atmosphere of Titan also contains oxygenated volatile species. The most abundant one to have been detected is CO with a concentration about 50 ppmv. The work presented here is an experimental simulation devoted to estimate the influence of CO on the Titan’s atmospheric reactivity. With this aim, CO is introduced in a standard N2/CH4 mixture at different mixing ratio up to 4.5%. The kinetics of the methane consumption is monitored with in situ mass spectrometry and the compositions of the gaseous phase and tholins produced in the reactor are characterized ex situ with GC–MS and elemental analysis. This work shows that CO modifies the composition of the gas phase with the detection of oxygenated compounds: CO2 and N2O. The presence of CO also drastically decreases the production rate of tholins, involving also a perturbation on the methane kinetics. Tholins are produced in lower global amounts, but their sizes are found to be significantly larger than without CO. The oxygen incorporation in tholins is found to be efficient, with an oxygen content of the same order of magnitude as the amount of CO in the initial gas mixture.