Polyurethane foam: A novel support for metal oxide packing used in the non-thermal plasma decomposition of CO2

Abstract

Regarding the growing rate of CO2 emission into the environment which is accompanied by environmental issues, its recovery and utilization are of great importance, but the existing conventional methods are not sufficiently economical due to high energy requirements. Thus, in this study, low temperature CO2 dissociation through a packed dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma reactor is investigated. Three-dimensional polyurethane foam (PU foam) with inter-connected porous structure is incorporated in the discharge volume of the DBD for the first time to evaluate its effects on the conversion and efficiency. In addition, for further improvement of the process, various packing materials including BaTiO3, TiO2, CeO2, ZrO2, CaO, Al2O3, Fe3O4, and SiO2 are coated over the PU foam and the corresponding results are compared. Results demonstrate that the foam-filled configuration can boost the conversion and energy efficiency relative to empty plasma. Interestingly, the plasma performance enhances more remarkably when the packing materials are coated over the foam. According to the results, presence of packing materials can exert physical effects over the performance of plasma. BaTiO3 exhibits the best performance regarding its highest effects. The highest obtainable conversion for the BaTiO3-coated configuration at the Specific Energy Input (SEI) of 60 kJ/L is nearly 27.4 %, showing 124 and 203 % enhancement in comparison with foam-filled and empty plasma configurations, respectively.