Detoxification of Trichloroethylene in a Low-Pressure Surface Wave Plasma Reactor

Abstract

Application of surface wave plasmas as an alternative technology for the destruction and removal of chlorinated hydrocarbon pollutants is demonstrated. The destruction of parts per thousand concentrations of trichloroethylene in air/water or oxygen mixtures has been investigated in a low-pressure reactor at 5 Torr. Effluent analysis included the determination of destruction and removal efficiencies by electron capture gas chromatography and product distribution by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, mass spectrometry, and titrimetric analysis. TCE conversions of up to 99.998% were achieved using radio frequency power densities ranging from 1.6 to 7.5 kJ/L and millisecond range residence times within the plasma. Product analysis indicated that trichloroethylene conversion was limited to light gases, primarily CO 2 , CO, HCl, and Cl 2 .

Travelling-wave-sustained discharges

“…Many possibilities for the use of TWSDs for surface processing and film deposition [12,149,[194][195][196][197][198][199][200][201][202][203][204][205][206][207][208][209][210][211][212][213], gas detoxification [214][215][216][217], for sterilization [218], for light sources [219][220][221][222][223] and lasers [224][225][226], for panel displays [227], for particle sources [228][229][230][231][232][233][234][235][236][237][238][239], for elementary analysis through atomic spectroscopy …”

Conversion of SO2 into elemental sulfur by using the RF plasma technique

“…But in this study we did not observe the long-chained H 2 SO 4 . This might be because the formation of the complex compound of H 2 SO 4 was associated with slow multistep mechanisms that occurred with difficulty in the RF plasma process (Arno and Bevan, 1996). In this study, we found that the other major products included H 2 and CO (i.e., syngas, the main reagents for the production of CH 3 OH) (Figure 2b).…”

Direct Mass Spectrometric Study of the Ionic Species Content of a C2HCl3/He/O2 Microwave Discharge Plasma

“…Among the viable treatment technologies, plasma remediation has emerged as a valuable tool owing to its highly efficient decomposition of gas-phase TCE [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]. Nonthermal plasmas such as microwave (MW) discharged plasma processing methods have been shown to be effective for treating dilute concentrations of pollutant molecules in large volume in the presence of background gases such as hydrogen and oxygen [2,3].…”