Reducing energy consumption in plasma NO conversion utilizing plasma aerodynamic effect

Abstract

Improving conversion efficiency with low power consumption is an important target in removing NO by plasma. In this paper, a novel design of surface dielectric barrier discharge (SDBD) reactor is proposed to control the flow fields. The influence of special input energy, inlet NO concentration, relative humidity, and oxygen content on NO conversion was investigated. The velocity and turbulence kinetic energy distribution in the reactor were simulated. The temperature during discharge was tested. The performance of configuration (a) is found better than that of configuration (b) in most cases. For example, the conversion efficiency was 73% and 52%(11.5 kV-50 kHz-300 ppm-2 L/min). And the energy efficiency was about 10.7 g/kWh and 7.7 g/kWh. The reaction time changes, temperatures, and turbulence kinetic energy are discussed. The reaction time changes and temperature are found to have little influence on the difference of results. The possible reason for this phenomenon is the change in turbulent kinetic energy. The products of the reactions are removed faster and the reactants are more uniformly distributed at a higher TKE. Based on simulation results, the integral of turbulent kinetic energy was 20 J/Kg without plasma and was significantly increased over 4956 J/Kg in configuration (a) and 4108 J/Kg in configuration (b)(11.5 kV-50 kHz-300 ppm-2 L/min). It is possibly the reason for a different performance of configuration (a) and (b). The phenomenon could be useful in NOx treatment or other gas-related plasma chemical processes.