Vehicle Exhaust Gas Clearance by Low Temperature Plasma-Driven Nano-Titanium Dioxide Film Prepared by Radiofrequency Magnetron Sputtering

A novel plasma-driven catalysis (PDC) reactor with special structure was proposed to remove vehicle exhaust gas. The PDC reactor which consisted of three quartz tubes and two copper electrodes was a coaxial dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) reactor. The inner and outer electrodes firmly surrounded the outer surface of the corresponding dielectric barrier layer in a spiral way, respectively. Nano-titanium dioxide (TiO2) film prepared by radiofrequency (RF) magnetron sputtering was coated on the outer wall of the middle quartz tube, separating the catalyst from the high voltage electrode. The spiral electrodes were designed to avoid overheating of microdischarges inside the PDC reactor. Continuous operation tests indicated that stable performance without deterioration of catalytic activity could last for more than 25 h. To verify the effectiveness of the PDC reactor, a non-thermal plasma(NTP) reactor was employed, which has the same structure as the PDC reactor but without the catalyst. The real vehicle exhaust gas was introduced into the PDC reactor and NTP reactor, respectively. After the treatment, compared with the result from NTP, the concentration of HC in the vehicle exhaust gas treated by PDC reactor reduced far more obviously while that of NO decreased only a little. Moreover, this result was explained through optical emission spectrum. The O emission lines can be observed between 870 nm and 960 nm for wavelength in PDC reactor. Together with previous studies, it could be hypothesized that O derived from catalytically O3 destruction by catalyst might make a significant contribution to the much higher HC removal efficiency by PDC reactor. A series of complex chemical reactions caused by the multi-components mixture in real vehicle exhaust reduced NO removal efficiency. A controllable system with a real-time feedback module for the PDC reactor was proposed to further improve the ability of removing real vehicle exhaust gas.