Plasma-catalytic oxidation of volatile organic compounds with honeycomb catalyst for industrial application

Efficiently processing volatile organic compounds (VOCs) with nonthermal plasma and honeycomb catalyst for practical industrial applications presents a sizable challenge. An attempt has been made to generate a large volume of uniform plasma at atmospheric pressure in a practical-scale honeycomb catalyst. H-ZSM-5, a type of zeolite, was washcoated on a commercial bare honeycomb monolith as the catalyst-supporting material, after which the monolith was impregnated with Pd. The plasma discharge power can be controlled by controlling the humidity in the feed gas, metal content, applied voltage, and total flow rate of the feed gas. The plasma was characterized by the voltage and current waveforms, and optical emission spectroscopy (OES). In this study, 85% of dilute toluene (15 ppm) was successfully removed from an airstream at a large flow rate of 60 L/min with an energy density of 84 J/L. Under this condition, the selectivity of CO2 was 76%. This investigation demonstrated the practical applicability of the plasma-honeycomb catalytic reactor to process a fast-flowing feed gas without resulting in a significant large pressure drop, which can hardly be achieved with typical packed-bed plasma reactors. © 2021 Institution of Chemical Engineers