Degradation of CO 2 through dielectric barrier discharge microplasma

The continually increasing use of fossil fuels throughout the world has caused carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) concentration to grow rapidly in the atmosphere. Increasing CO 2 emissions are the major cause of global warming, and a number of studies have been done to show the predicted effects of global warming. This paper reported a method of degradation of CO 2 through dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma; a microplasma reactor was used to decompose CO 2 into carbon monoxide (CO) at normal atmosphere and room temperature. Gas chromatography was used to analyze the compositions of the outlet gases. No carbon deposits were found in this work. A variety of parameters, such as feed flow rate, input power, frequency, discharge gap, and external electrode length were investigated. The effects of these parameters on CO 2 conversion were examined. At the same time, the effects of feed flow rate and input power on the energy efficiency were studied. The results indicated that a higher conversion of CO 2 can be realized with a lower feed flow rate, a limited higher input power and a lower frequency. However, a higher feed flow rate and a lower input power were beneficial for energy utilization. The discharge gap had a little effect on the conversion of CO 2 in microplasma reactor. In this work, the highest conversion of CO 2 was 18.0%, and the highest energy efficiency was 3.8%. The DBD microplasma is a promising method for decomposing CO 2 .© 2014 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd