Co2 Conversion Performance and Electrical Characterization of Pulse Micro-Gap Dielectric Barrier Discharge Plasma Reactor

CO2 conversion into CO and O2 using dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) reactors suffers from a low conversion and energy efficiency. Therefore, proper tuning of plasma processing parameters and modification of DBD reactor design is needed to enhance the CO2 conversion performance. This study investigated the combined effect of micro-gap discharge and pulse power on the CO2 conversion performance of the CO2 splitting process in a DBD reactor. The CO2 conversion, energy efficiency, CO selectivity, and CO yield were evaluated at various discharge power and gas flow rate. Moreover, the electrical characterization was performed to evaluate the effect of these processing parameters on the plasma regime of the pulse micro-gap DBD reactor. The findings indicate that the CO2 conversion and streamer intensity were significantly influenced by gas flow rate, while the energy efficiency and discharge regime were greatly affected by discharge power. In addition, the CO selectivity appears to be almost independent of the discharge power and slightly decreased as reducing of the gas flow rate. Moreover, the CO yield demonstrated a linear relationship to the CO2 conversion. The maximum CO2 conversion of 51.42% was obtained at an SEI of 154.74 kJ/L with a corresponding energy efficiency of 4.15%. On the other hand, the highest energy efficiency of 9.43% was achieved at an SEI of 25.26 kJ/L with a corresponding CO2 conversion of 4.15%. These results suggest that the pulse micro-gap DBD might be more favorable than the DBD reactor with expensive packing material for industrial application