Destruction efficiency and power usage for a single dielectric barrier discharge plasma reactor

Scope and method of study. This study was intended to understand a scaled up plasma reactor for the destruction of volatile organics from paint booth emissions. Electrical and power system requirements were studied in order to understand the cost of running a system in industry. Ozone production and effluent products were also analyzed. The plasma reactor being studied was a single dielectric barrier discharge with a cylindrical geometry. Three parameters were varied in order to understand their interaction with the efficiency of the system. The number of tubes, retention time, and applied voltage were studied in this experiment.; Findings and conclusions. The system was capable of high destruction efficiencies and but was not competitive when compared to other reactors recently studied. Ozone production was small compared to ozone generators, and essentially no effluent products were created. The reactor was not capable of an instant-on feature, but did not take more than 8 minutes to be effective. Not enough data was collected to fully understand the interaction among the parameters varied under this study. More research is required for a more complete analysis of the system.