A Trial for Improvement of Energy Efficiency of Plasma Reactor by Superposing Two Heterogeneous Discharges - Characteristics of Surface and Corona Discharge Combined Plasma Reactor -

이종방전 중첩에 의한 방전 플라스마반응기의 효율개선의 시도 - 연면.직류코로나 방전 중첩형 반응기의 특성 -

In order to cope with environmental problems caused by harmful gases emitted from various industrial sources, a new technology which employs discharge plasma formed in ordinary atmospheric pressure has been intensively investigated in many industrialized nations. Although a plenty of useful outcomes and suggestions have been made public by scientists in this field, few commercial products which effectively decompose pollutant gases have appeared as yet. This is partly because that the energy efficiency of a most effective plasma reactor has not reached a satisfactory level in comparison with those of devices using conventional technologies. In an attempt to solve the problem mentioned above, we noticed to combine heterogeneous electrical discharges. This concepts is based on that each plasma reactor has its specific spatial region in which chemical reaction are active and by electrically affected with another reactor of different type, the activated region would increase - which may lead to cutting down the energy consumption. To prove this concept experimentally, two different discharge equipments, a plane ceramic-based surface discharge electrode and a corona electrode with tungsten needle may, are selected and combined to fabricate a hybrid plasma reactor. The results are summarized as follows; (1) Ozone concentration generated in the plasma region drastically increases when the positive corona discharge is added to the surface discharge. The rate of increase of ozone depends on the frequency of the surface discharge. The negative corona, however, does not contribute to the improvement of the ozone generation. (2) NO(nitrogen monoxide) decomposition rate also improves by simultaneously applying the surface and the positive corona discharges. The effect of the corona superposition is more evident when the level of the surface discharge is moderate. (3) By adjusting the corona level, the net energy efficiency during NO decomposition improves in comparison with the simple surface discharge reactor.