Experimental measurements of naphta-like hydrocarbons conversion kinetics in an atmospheric dielectric barrier discharge

In the present work, experiments on naptha-like hydrocarbons degradation using arrays of Dielectric Barrier Discharge (DBD) microreactors were performed for the case of high dilution in argon gas and low residence time conditions. A simplified plasma reactor model is presented, and the experimental setup and methodology used to verify the model are presented as well. Experimental conversion data is used to establish a pseudo-first order kinetic constant for the reactor, assuming a plug flow continuous reactor model and using the residence time as the independent variable for the study. Residence time on the experiments was varied by either increasing the length of the reactor (series array) or by splitting the gas flow (parallel array). A rate coefficient of 0.002 s^-1 was found for the conditions of the experiment. The selectivity and kinetic pathways are beyond the scope of this paper and will be covered in future work; nevertheless, a qualitative assessment of the hydrocarbon degradation products is presented for the experiments carried out.

Keywords: Plasma DBD, Process intensification, Hydrocarbon reforming, Plasma chemistry.