Plasma-catalytic Selective Reduction of NO with C2H4 in the Presence of Excess Oxygen

This paper reports observations of significant synergistic effects between dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasmas and Cu-ZSM-5 catalysts for C2H4 selective reduction of NOx at 250 °C in the presence of excess oxygen by using a one-stage plasma-over-catalyst (POC) reactor. With the reactant gas mixture of 530 ppm NO, 650 ppm C2H4, 5.8% O2 in N2 and GHSV = 12000 h-1, the pure catalytic, pure plasma-induced (discharges over fused silica pellets) and plasma- catalytic (in the POC reactor) NOx conversion are 39%, 1.5% and 79%, respectively. The in-situ optical emission spectra of the reactive systems imply some short-lived active species formed from plasma-induced and plasma-catalytic processes may be responsible to the observed synergistic effects in this one-stage POC system.