The Nebulotron experiment developed at CRPG (Bekaert et al., 2018; Fig. 1) has been modified in order to collect condensable gases at liquid nitrogen temperature. Lucile Pentecoste, David Bekaert and Laurent Tissandier are the main contributors involved in this task.
Fig. 1 Picture of the Nebulotron at CRPG (May 2019) updated with a new glass coil for the collect of condensable gases above 77 K . The left part allow mixtures of gases to be prepared and send to the reactor (center of the image). The cold trap is located between the reactor and the pumping system (right part of the image).
Fig. 2. After circulating into the plasma (images on the left), the gas mixture goes through a glass coil ( center) refrigerated in liquid nitrogen (right). Most condensable molecules above 77 K are collected and, at the end of the experiment, transferred to a “transportable cold trap” to be characterised in terms of elemental and isotopic concentrations.
For now, N2-H2 plasmas were lighted up and NH3 molecules were collected. Analyses of the N/H, 15N/14N and D/H ratios are on-going.