Effect of Water Vapor on Toluene Removal in Catalysis-DBD Plasma Reactors

The experiment was carried out in a cylindrical dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) reactor assisted with a catalyst to decompose toluene under different humidity. In order to explore the synergistic effect on removing toluene in the catalysis-DBD reactor, this paper investigated the decomposition efficiency and the energy consumption in the catalysis-DBD and the non-catalyst DBD reactors under different humidity. The results showed that the catalysis-DBD reactor had a better performance than the non-catalysis one at the humidity ratio of 0.4%, and the removal efficiency of toluene could reach 88.6% in the catalysis-DBD reactor, while it was only 59.9% in the non-catalytic reactor. However, there was no significant difference in the removal efficiency of toluene between the two reactors when the humidities were 1.2% and 2.4%. Additionally, the degradation products were also analyzed in order to gain a better understanding of the mechanism of decomposing toluene in a catalysis-DBD reactor.