Volatile organic compounds(VOCs) are the main indoor pollutants. The conventional methods to treat them are either of high cost or of secondary pollution risk. In order to develop an efficient and low consuming purification system against VOCs
dielectric barrier discharge(DBD) is innovatively introduced to cooperate with photo-catalytic treatment. Instead of using ultraviolet light solely to activate photo-catalytic materials
the low-pressure plasma generated from DBD plays an important role in the process and greatly reduces the energy consumption. Final products of the system are small inorganic molecules
such as CO2 and H2 O
and a small amount of non-toxic by-products. In the experiments
modified Ti O2 as photo-catalyst was loaded on the electrode surface
and the VOCs were successfully treated by DBD and the photo-catalytic in the treatment room. The cooperating treatment had obviously higher efficiency than either DBD or photo-catalytic treatments. By theoretically analyzing the mechanism of DBD and photo-catalytic treatments
we investigated the relation of cooperated treatment efficiency with treatment settings
such as electrode diameter
temperature
humidity
catalyst location
and catalyst quantity. It is concluded that the treatment efficiency is negatively correlated with electrode diameter and humidity
positively correlated with catalyst amount
but barely correlated with temperature. Loading the catalyst on the positive electrode can lower the treatment efficiency compared to catalyst on the negative electrode. By combining DBD and photo-catalytic treatments together
the two means complement each other and blend into a method that paves the way for developing VOCs treatment of high efficiency