Toluene Decomposition by a Two-stage Hybrid Plasma Catalyst System in Dry Air

This paper presents a two-stage hybrid plasma catalyst system for toluene decomposition in dry air. It consists of a dielectric barrier discharge reactor and a homemade Co-Mn catalyst bed reactor. At room temperature and under a bed gas hourly space velocity of up to 32233 h
^-1
, the decomposition efficiency is about 92.4% when plasma specific energy density is around 100 J/L. With increasing the catalyst bed temperature to about 350 K, almost 100% of the toluene and the plasma generated O
₃
are decomposed simultaneously. The Fourier transform infrared spectra show that the major reaction byproducts are CO
₂
. By means of X-ray powder diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and N
₂
physisorption diagnostics, we conclude that both Co
₃
Mn
₃
O
₄
and the lattice oxygen species play an important role in simultaneous toluene decomposition and ozone utilization.