Discharge of Carbon Dioxide Using a Non-Thermal Plasma Reactor

This paper reports a numerical study on the discharge of carbon dioxide using a non-thermal dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma reactor at ambient conditions. DBD plasma reactors have been used for various applications due to their ease of production, process control, operation at different conditions. The applications of DBD plasma reactors include discharge of gases. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas formed as a byproduct of fossil fuel combustion. Use of DBD non-thermal plasma reactor can be a promising technology for carbon dioxide mitigation due to its operation at low temperatures, lack of need for catalysts, and flexibility in controlling the products generated. In this study, a tubular DBD non-thermal plasma reactor was modeled with different electrode materials separated by different dielectric materials. The aim was to provide guidelines for the design and material selection for optimizing DBD plasma reactors for CO₂ discharge. A parametric set of simulations was performed using a finite element solver to investigate how electrode and dielectric materials affect the discharge volume of CO₂ and power requirement of the non-thermal plasma discharge of CO₂. The results showed that electrode material did not affect the discharge or the power requirement. However, dielectric material with higher permittivity or lower conductivity increased the gas discharge and power requirement. Among the analyzed materials, aluminum electrode and mica tube were suggested based on the simulation results for the maximum gas discharge and low power requirement.