Economic assessment of proposed electric-discharge non-thermal plasma field-pilot demonstration units for NO{sub x} removal in jet-engine exhaust: White paper for SERDP Project CP-1038

This project is currently evaluating non-thermal plasma (NTP) technologies for treating jet-engine exhaust arising from DoD test facilities. In the past, some economic analyses for NTP de-NO{sub x} have shown that it is not economical, compared to other techniques. The main reasons for this conclusion was that the previous analyses examined stand-alone, or less mature electrical-discharge reactors, or electron-beam based systems that incorporated both chemical additives and quite expensive electron accelerators. Also, in contrast to more recent developments, both the discharge and electron-beam techniques of the past did not extensively incorporate methods to increase the yields of active NO{sub x}-decomposing species. In an earlier White paper and a Project Report, the authors have analyzed the costs of more mature NTP systems incorporating chemical additives and new-concept NTP technologies for jet-engine emissions control and have shown lower exhaust-gas treatment costs for NTP systems compared to baseline standard de-NO{sub x} technologies like Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) combined with a wet scrubber or SCR combined with an electrostatic precipitator (ESP). In this paper, the authors will examine their most-promising candidate NTP reactor systems for a field-pilot demonstration on jet-engine exhaust and discuss the economic analyses for these hybrid units, which show that the economics of the proposed candidate systems are more favorable than earlier NTP reactor economic-assessment conclusions for NO{sub x} removal