Plasma catalysis is gaining increasing interest for CO2 conversion, but the interaction between the plasma and catalyst is still poorly understood. This is caused by limited systematic materials research, since most works combine a plasma with commercial supported catalysts and packings. In the present paper, we study the influence of specific material and reactor properties, as well as reactor/bead configuration, on the conversion and energy efficiency of CO2 dissociation in a packed bed dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) reactor. Of the various packing materials investigated, BaTiO3 yields the highest conversion and energy efficiency, i.e., 25% and 4.5%.Our results show that, when evaluating the influence of catalysts, the impact of the packing (support) material itself cannot be neglected, since it can largely affect the conversion and energy efficiency. This shows the large potential for further improvement of packed bed plasma reactors for CO2 conversion and other chemical conversion reactions by adjusting both packing (support) properties and catalytically active sites. Moreover, we clearly prove that comparison of results obtained in different reactor setups should be done with care, since there is a large effect of the reactor setup and reactor/bead configuration.
The vibrating-nozzle technology is very interesting to very easily and very rapidly produce industrial amounts of functional microspheres. The technology was used to make hybrid alginate−silica microspheres by droplet coagulation. The microspheres were formed starting from suspensions of sodium alginate, and coagulation occurred in an aqueous solution of calcium ions. To enhance the mechanical properties of the alginate raw material, it was combined with two different silica sources: tetramethyl orthosilicate (TMOS) and commercial silica powder. The two different batches of alginate−silica microspheres were fully compared with regard to their morphology, composition, shrinking behavior, and stability in acidic conditions. It was shown that the incorporation of an inorganic matrix resulted in a material with a better stabilized porous structure and a higher resistance in an acidic environment. Both are important when functional particles are designed to be used for adsorption of metal ions, either as a stirred suspension or as a stationary phase in a chromatographic column. A study of the adsorption performance was conducted in batch mode for neodymium(III), a representative element for the group of critical rare-earth elements. The effect of stripping (desorption) on the adsorption performance and reusability was also investigated. The functional alginate−silica microspheres show a sustainable character.
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