Achieving Better NOxRemoval in Discharge Plasma Reactor by Field Enhancement

Application of plasma chemistry for gas cleaning is gaining prominence in recent years, mainly from an energy efficiency point of view. In this paper we conducted a comparative study of NO/NO x removal using two different types of dielectric barrier discharge electrodes, wire-cylinder reactor, pipe-cylinder reactor. Investigations were first carried out with synthetic gases to obtain the baseline information on the NO/NO x removal with respect to the two geometries studied. Further, experiments were carried out with raw diesel exhaust under loaded condition. A high NO x removal efficiency of 90% was observed for the pipe-cylinder reactor as compared to that of 53.4% for the wire-cylinder reactor. Furthermore, for the same energy consumed per NO molecule (about 73 eV/NO molecule), the removal efficiency increased from 67% for the wire-cylinder to about 98% for the pipe-cylinder which was quite appreciable.