A highly efficient multi-stage dielectric barrier discharge (DBD)-catalytic system for simultaneous toluene degradation and O3 elimination

Abstract

DBD-catalytic system has been widely studied for volatile organic compounds abatement, whereas how to obtain high mineralization rate and low zone emission synchronously remains a challenge. In view of this, a new type of multi-stage DBD-catalytic system (MS1) was established to abatement toluene in this study. The mineralization rates of reactors IPC (63.81%) and MS1 (61.14%) were much higher than MS2, PPC1 and PPC2 reactors, which were 48.36%, 46.84%, and 5.8% at 33.8 (Vp-p) kV, respectively. For export ozone concentration, IPC reactor had the highest concentration of 160 ppm, and the values of reactors MS1, MS2, PPC1, and PPC2 were 79, 34.2, 34.25 and 29 ppm, respectively. The catalyst filled in zone II can be utilized to further decompose the residual toluene and intermediates and also promote the decomposition of ozone, which lead to the superior performance of the MS1 reactor. The influence of applied voltage, adsorbed amount, and discharge time on the toluene removal performance was investigated to optimize the operation parameters of MS1 reactor, their appropriate values were 28.3–31.1 (Vp-p) kV, 0.179–0.223 mmol, ∼1 h, respectively. Lastly, the contribution of disparate zones in multi-stage DBD-catalytic system to the toluene degradation were elucidated on the basis of the GC–MS results.