Plasma-assisted decomposition of methanol and trichloroethylene in atmospheric pressure air streams by electrical discharge processing

Abstract

Experiments are presented on the plasma-assisted decomposition of dilute concentrations of methanol and trichloroethylene in atmospheric pressure air streams by electrical discharge processing. This investigation used two types of discharge reactors, a dielectric-barrier and a pulsed corona discharge reactor, to study the effects of gas temperature and electrical energy input on the decomposition chemistry and byproduct formation. Our experimental data on both methanol and trichloroethylene show that, under identical gas conditions, the type of electrical discharge reactor does not affect the energy requirements for decomposition or byproduct formation. Our experiments on methanol show that discharge processing converts methanol to COx with an energy yield that increases with temperature. In contrast to the results from methanol, COx is only a minor product in the decomposition of trichloroethylene. In addition, higher temperatures decrease the energy yield for trichloroethylene. This effect may be due to increased competition from decomposition of the byproducts dichloroacetyl chloride and phosgene. In all cases plasma processing using an electrical discharge device produces CO preferentially over CO2.