Pathway Study on Dielectric Barrier Discharge Plasma Conversion of Hexane

Abstract

A plasma reactor based on dielectric barrier discharge has been developed for oxidative cracking of hexane to yield olefins at atmospheric pressure. Dissociation of hexane in the presence of oxygen with nonequilibrium plasma state represents complex chemistry, and both conversion and product selectivities differ significantly from the thermodynamic equilibrium state. In order to understand plasma chemistry initiated by electron impact processes, the Boltzmann equation is solved to determine the average electron energy and energy fractions in collision processes. Activation of oxygen in the plasma brings a new route with electron impact dissociation yielding atomic oxygen radicals and initiates oxidative cracking of hexane. Changes in certain features of the dissociation pattern of hexane to yield olefin products with varying parameters such as temperature, oxygen addition, and helium concentration are discussed.

Plasma-catalytic oxidation of toluene over MCeZrOx/TiO2 (M = Cu, Mn, Ni and Co) catalysts using a dielectric barrier discharge reactor

“…48 Nevertheless, the cross-sectional data for toluene are currently unavailable in the existing literature. Agiral et al 49 addressed this gap by approximating the cross sections of collision processes in the plasma oxidative cracking of n -C 6 H 14 . They employed additivity rules formulated based on experimental measurements, indicating that the cross sections of certain hydrocarbons CxHy exhibit linearity with the number x of carbon atoms.…”

Oxidative Conversion of Propane in a Microreactor in the Presence of Plasma over MgO-Based Catalysts: An Experimental Study

“…39 Indeed, in the presence of catalyst layers, we observed additional microdischarges distributed over the entire electrode area. 28 This higher number of charges transferred allows more impacts (and higher in-elastic collisions) giving rise to excitation of a higher number of propane molecules.…”

“…In fact, as shown in Figure 5, propane conversion increases with increasing energy input due to the increase of (i) the number of electrons and (ii) their average energy. [27][28] Remarkably, propane conversions up to 30 mol % could be achieved near room temperature in the presence of plasma. Further experiments were carried out applying 3 W of power.…”

N-pentane activation and products formation in a temperature-controlled dielectric barrier discharge reactor

“…The cross section of C 5 H 12 can be estimated as 2.5 times the cross section of C 2 H 6 , because the analysis of total ionization cross section data for C x H y (x=1-3, 1y2x+2) has indicated that the x linearity of these cross sections can be extended down to low energies. Also, the additivity rules for chemical bonds have been shown to manifest themselves in linear x and y dependencies of total and partial cross sections of other electron impact processes [38]. Total ionization cross sections, total dissociative excitation and vibrational excitation cross sections for the e+C 2 H 6 system available in [39].…”