Synergistic effect of plasma power and temperature on the cracking of toluene in the N2 based product gas

In this research, a dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) reactor is used to study the cracking of the toluene into C1-C6 hydrocarbons. The combined effect of parameters such as temperature (20-400 degrees C) and plasma power (10-40 W) was investigated to evaluate the DBD reactor per-formance. The main gaseous products from the decomposition of toluene include lower hydro-carbon (C1-C6). The cracking of toluene increases with power at all temperatures (20-400 degrees C). On the otherhand, it decreases from 92.8 to 73.1% at 10 W, 97.2 to 80.5% at 20, 97.5 to 86.5% at 30 W, and 98.4 to 93.7% at 40 W with raising the temperature from 20 to 400 degrees C. Nonetheless, as the temperature and plasma input power increase, the methane yield increases. At 40 W, the maximum methane yield was 5.1%. At 10 and 20 W, the selectivity to C2 increases as the tem-perature rises up to 400 degrees C. At 30 and 40 W, it began to drop after 300 degrees C due to the formation of methane and the yield of methane increases significantly beyond this temperature.

Automated summary

In this study, a DBD reactor was used to investigate the cracking of toluene into C1-C6 hydrocarbons. The effects of temperature (20-400 degrees C) and plasma power (10-40 W) on the reactor performance were studied. The main gaseous products from toluene decomposition were lower hydrocarbons (C1-C6). The cracking of toluene increased with power at all temperatures but decreased as the temperature increased from 20 to 400 degrees C. However, the methane yield increased with increasing temperature and plasma input power.