The preliminary discharging characterization of a novel APGD plume and its application in organic contaminant degradation

Abstract

An atmospheric pressure glow discharge plume (APGD-p) using a dielectric barrier discharge reactor with one conductive liquid electrode was designed in our study. The preliminary characteristics of the plume and application in the degradation of a dye, methyl violet 5BN (MV-5BN), were presented in this paper. The APGD reactor produced a cold plasma plume with temperature not higher than 320 K at power 5–50 W. The MV-5BN solution as a probe for dye wastewater was treated by the downstream gases of the plasma plume. The results indicated that the active argon (Ar) and nitrogen (N2) gases had little effect on the MV-5BN degradation, but the air and oxygen (O2) gas depleted the organic molecules effectively. In particular, the downstream O2 gas degraded the dye molecules entirely.