Study on the degradation of VOCs in a plasma-catalyst hybrid reactor

The performance of a plasma-catalyst hybrid reactor for VOCs removal was studied in this paper, xylene and MnO_x were acted as the pollutant and catalyst, respectively. The combinations between reactor and catalyst were conducted in active discharging and post discharging zone, respectively. The parameters investigated included discharge power, discharge gap width, inlet xylene concentration and moisture content in the gas stream. The CO₂ selectivity was determined synchronously. Experimental results indicated that, no matter where the catalyst was located, the plasma-catalyst hybrid technology can effectively destroy xylene molecules. For dry gas stream, high removal efficiency of xylene would accompany with the high power and low inlet concentration, and achieved the best at different discharge gap width in different combining zone. Too much or too little water vapor did not favor xylene destruction. An optimal xylene removal was reached at around 1.6% by volume of humidity content. In addition, the more important result obtained from this work was that, despite the changes of experimental conditions, the higher synergetic effect was always occurred when the catalyst was placed in the post discharging zone. The same conclusion was educed on CO₂ selectivity, and then, benefit the environment.