Chemical reaction equilibrium in nanoporous materials: NO dimerization reaction in carbon slit nanopores

We present a molecular-level simulation study of the effects of confinement on chemical reaction equilibrium in nanoporous materials. We use the reaction ensemble Monte Carlo (RxMC) method to investigate the effects of temperature, nanopore size, bulk pressure, and capillary condensation on the nitric oxide dimerization reaction in a model carbon slit nanopore in equilibrium with a bulk reservoir. In addition to the RxMC simulations, we also utilize the molecular-dynamics method to determine self-diffusion coefficients for confined nonreactive mixtures of nitric oxide monomers and dimers at compositions obtained from the RxMC simulations. We analyze the effects of the temperature, nanopore width, bulk pressure, and capillary condensation on the reaction equilibrium with respect to the reaction conversion, fluid structure, and self-diffusion coefficients. We show that the influence of the temperature, nanopore size, and capillary condensation on the confined reaction equilibrium is quite dramatic while the effect of the bulk pressure on the reaction equilibrium in the carbon slit nanopore is only moderate. This work is an extension of previous work by Turner et al. [J. Chem. Phys. 114, 1851 (2001)] on the confined reactive nitric oxide system.