Catalysis-assisted plasma technology for carbon tetrachloride destruction

Catalysis-assisted plasma technology is a new concept developed to decompose carbon tetrachloride (CCl₄), one of the greenhouse gases. A laboratory-scale plasma reactor used a packed-bed reactor with 1 to 3 mm spherical BaTiO₃ pellets. One configuration of the system used a two-stage process in which the packed-bed reactor was followed by a 1% Pt/Al₂O₃ catalyst reactor. The other configuration employed a unique one-stage catalysis/plasma process in which the BaTiO₃ pellets were coated by active catalysts such as Co, Cu, Cr, Ni, and V. The power supplies used for these experiments were either a 50 Hz neon transformer or an 18 kHz invertor neon transformer. Experiments were performed to characterize the catalytic plasma reactor performance on CCl₄ destruction. Special attention was focused on the enhancement of the CCl₄ destruction and the reduction of byproduct CO production by catalyst selection in the one-stage reactor