Destruction of volatile organic compounds used in a semiconductor industry by a capillary tube discharge reactor

Nonthermal plasma technologies offer an innovative approach to the problem of decomposing various volatile organic compounds (VOCs). We focussed on dc capillary tube discharge plasma reactors to study the decomposition/destruction efficiency for toluene, EGM, trichloroethane, and trichloroethylene at 50 to 2300 ppm level in dry air. The effects of gas flow rate, VOC concentration, and reactor operating conditions on the decomposition and analysis of reactant conversion for each VOC were investigated. The results show that VOC destruction efficiency is as high as 90% even under a short residence time (3.8 ms) with a destruction energy efficiency of up to 9.5 g (VOC)/kWh. Laboratory-scale plasma technology was successfully demonstrated towards the application of VOC control in the semiconductor clean room environments