Study on the parameters of non-thermal plasma degradation process based on the combination of simulation and experiment

Abstract

The destruction of benzene in a dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) reactor was studied in this work. The effects of specific energy density, initial concentration and oxygen content on benzene degradation efficiency were investigated by experiment and matrix correlation analysis. The results showed that specific energy density was the most important factor on benzene removal with a Pearson's coefficient of 0.7, meanwhile both initial concentration and oxygen content presented the inverse influence. In addition, a model to study the plasma discharge process was developed by COMSOL simulation software and surface reactions were included in the model. The behavior of the plasma was described by the coupled equations of electron density, heavy matter density and electron mean energy, and the drift-diffusion equation was calculated. When the peak voltage is 30 kV, the terminal current obtained by the simulation is 0.03 A, and the corresponding output current measured by the experiment is 0.013 A. Simulated and experimental current change trends are the same, indicating that the method simulation is correct and reasonable.