Regular Article

Carbon dioxide conversion by means of coplanar dielectric barrier discharges^*

¹ Leibniz Institute for Plasma Science and Technology (INP Greifswald), Felix-Hausdorff-Str. 2, 17489 Greifswald, Germany
² Institute of Physics, Ernst-Moritz-Arndt University of Greifswald, Felix-Hausdorff-Str. 6, 17489 Greifswald, Germany

^a e-mail: milko.schiorlin@inp-greifswald.de

Received: 16 February 2016
Revised: 2 June 2016
Accepted: 20 June 2016
Published online: 8 August 2016

Abstract

To face the worldwide problem of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO₂) emission new techniques have to be developed. One approach for carbon capture utilization (CCU) is the conversion of CO₂ to more valuable chemicals, e.g., carbon monoxide (CO) by means of non-thermal plasma generated at ambient conditions and supplied by excess energy from renewable sources. This paper reports about the effect of the admixture of inert gases, namely nitrogen or argon to CO₂ in a coplanar dielectric barrier discharge (DBD). Systematic experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of applied voltage, frequency, flowrate and CO₂ concentration in the influent. The composition of products, energy efficiency and yield were determined. Within the investigated parameter ranges, the maximum conversion of CO₂ to CO efficiency of 1% was achieved when the specific input energy was 190 J L^-1, whereas the maximum CO yield of 0.7% was achieved when the specific input energy was 210 J L^-1. In conclusion, the energy efficiency can be significantly increased by operating the plasma in a diluted CO₂ gas.