CO is activated in a plasma reactor followed by hydrogenation over a Cu-Fe-Ce/HZSM-5 catalyst, and the intrinsic kinetics of the plasma catalytic process are studied. Compared with CO hydrogenation using Cu-Fe-Ce/HZSM-5 alone, the CO conversion and the dimethyl ether selectivity for the plasma catalytic process are increased by 16.3 %, and 10.1 %, respectively, indicating that the CO was activated by the plasma to promote hydrogenation. A study of the intrinsic kinetics shows that the activation energies of methanol formation, the reverse water-gas shift reaction, and methanol dehydration to dimethyl ether are 149.34, 75.47, and 73.18 kJ mol , respectively, which are lower than if Cu-Fe-Ce/HZSM-5 is used without plasma, indicating that the activation of CO in the plasma reduces the activation energy of the hydrogenation reaction and improves the yield of dimethyl ether.