Kinetic scheme of the non-equilibrium discharge in nitrogen-oxygen mixtures

A kinetic scheme for non-equilibrium discharge in nitrogen-oxygen mixtures is developed, which almost wholly describes chemical transformations of particles in the cold (200 K<or=T<or=500 K) vibrationally unexcited gas. The kinetic scheme includes processes of excitation of electronic states, destruction and ionization of heavy particles by electron impact, associative ionization, electron attachment and detachment, electron-ion and ion-ion recombination, chemical transformations of neutral particles (in ground and excited electronic states) and ion conversion. On the basis of kinetic modelling in the framework of the kinetic scheme proposed, the influence of the electronic excitations of nitrogen molecules and atoms on air composition dynamics is analysed.