Recent Development of Technology in Scale-up of Plasma Reactors for Environmental and Energy Applications

• DOI: 10.1007/s11090-021-10201-7
• Publication Date: 2021-08-10T19:02:30Z
• Authors: Masaaki Okubo
• Keywords: 13. Climate action; 02 engineering and technology; 0210 nano-technology; 7. Clean energy; 12. Responsible consumption

To date, numerous studies have investigated the aftertreatment of exhaust gases from fossil-fueled combustors and combustion engines by plasmas as an environmental plasma application. Owing to the high power requirements of environmental plasma, it is difficult to use the plasma alone for aftertreatment; hence, a hybrid process that combines plasma processing with other techniques is required to reduce the overall power consumption. In developing countries, low-cost plasma hybrid processing has attracted considerable attention as an alternative to the selective catalytic reduction NOx decomposition (De-NOx) method and wet lime–gypsum SOx decomposition method. Moreover, reduced catalytic activity can be enhanced by the plasma because of the decreased exhaust gas temperature, owing to the increased combustion efficiency. This paper reviews studies on successful air pollutant decomposition processes using the plasma chemical process with scale-up reactors. First, experimental techniques and block diagrams of various environmental plasma systems are presented. Subsequently, real-world systems of scale-up plasma reactors are described in detail. Several experimental results suggest that the hybrid treatment of particulate matter and dry De-NOx is very promising from the viewpoint of energy consumption and material recycling. CO2 treatment is a very important direction for future work in environmental plasma.