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Co-processing of two greenhouse gases, methane and carbon dioxide, was carried out in a dielectric barrier plasma reactor. The influence of feed gas proportion on the performance of the plasma reactor was investigated, especially with an objective to increase the conversion of the reactants and selectivity to syngas. To understand the influence of the catalyst on dry reforming, 10–30% NiO/Al2O3 catalysts were prepared by a single-step combustion synthesis and various physicochemical techniques confirmed the formation of nanosized Ni particles. A total of 10% of the discharge volume was packed with Ni/Al2O3 catalysts in a packed-bed configuration. An interesting observation is the increased syngas selectivity on the addition of catalyst to plasma, and among the catalysts tested, 20% Ni showed a H2/CO ratio of 2.25 against 1.2 with a plasma reactor alone.

Activated carbons (ACs) were developed from bio-waste materials like rice husk and peanut shell (PS) by various physicochemical activation methods. PS char digested in nitric acid followed by treatment at 673 K resulted in high surface area up to ∼585 m(2)/g. The novelty of the present study is the identification of oxygen functional groups formed on the surface of activated carbons by infrared and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and quantification by using temperature programmed decomposition (TPD). Typical TPD data indicated that each activation method may lead to varying amounts of acidic and basic functional groups on the surface of the adsorbent, which may be a crucial factor in determining the adsorption capacity. It was shown that ACs developed during the present study are good adsorbents, especially for the removal of a model textile dye methylene blue (MB) from aqueous solution. As MB is a basic dye, H(2)O(2)-treated rice husk showed the best adsorption capacity, which is in agreement with the acidic groups present on the surface. Removal of the dye followed Langmuir isotherm model, whereas MB adsorption on ACs followed pseudo-second-order kinetics.

Supporting Information1. Characterization of the ceria catalyst Nitrogen adsorption-desorption isothermThe N2 adsorption -desorption isotherms shown in Fig. S1. The BET surface area of the ceria was deduced from adsorption -desorption isotherms it is around 89 m2/g and pore size19.2 Aº and pore volume 0.073 cc/g. X-ray diffractionThe formation of ceria fluorite structure was confirmed by XRD pattern as shown in Fig. S2 (JCPDF#810792).The crystal size calculated from the Debye-Scherrer method and it was found that the size of the synthesized CeO2 is around 15 nm.

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