Carbon Particles Reduction in Diesel Engine with Non-thermal Plasma Technology

Non-thermal plasma (NTP) technology is considered to be one of the most promising technologies in diesel exhaust after-treatment, which has the advantages of simple operation, high conversion efficiency and no secondary pollution. In this paper, a NTP reactor was designed based upon the dielectric barrier discharge theory. The bench test was carried out and the reduction of carbon particles from diesel engine exhaust with NTP technology had been investigated. The results showed that there was a great decrease in carbon particles after NTP treatment and the maximum reduction was around 58%. Furthermore, the morphology and the components change of carbon particles were analyzed by using the scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Energy dispersive X-Ray micro-analyzer (EDS). It can be detected that the diameter of the carbon particles became smaller and the amount of C atoms was significantly reduced under the treatment of NTP technology.