Sustainable indoor air-purifying technology based on plasma assisted catalysis.

The indoor air quality has decreased greatly in the last couple of decades due to the increasing concentration of volatile organic compounds in indoor air. This increase is a result of the improved air tightness of buildings and the growing use of numerous synthetic chemicals. It is therefore necessary to remove these harmful compounds so that the general quality of indoor air can be improved.One possible way of doing so, is by means of plasma assisted catalysis. This is a very promising technique that combines the advantages of high product selectivity of catalysis with the fast start-up from plasma technology. It is therefore perfectly suitable as sustainable indoor air-purifying technology. In this project, more insight will be gained regarding the processes that occur in such a combined system. For this, a photocatalytic nano-coating will be applied on the collector electrode of a wire-to-plate corona discharge reactor.The removal of acetaldehyde from indoor air, as performed by both the combined system and the corona reactor on its own, will be looked into so that the combined effect of plasma and catalysis can be studied. The degradation of acetaldehyde will be monitored by performing both gaseous phase and surface related studies, so that every potential by-product can be detected. It is essential that there is a complete removal of the pollutant, i.e. no adsorbed intermediates can remain on the catalytic surface as this would decrease the removal efficiency. Furthermore, the effects of polarity (both positive and negative), voltage (between 10000 and 25000 V) and relative humidity (between 10 and 90%) will be studied, so that a set of optimal working conditions can be determined.This project is the start-up of a new pillar of the research group of sustainable energy and air purification (DuEL), hence it fits perfectly in the call of 'Klein Project'.

Keywords:INDOOR AIR QUALITY, PLASMA CATALYSIS, PHOTOCATALYSIS

Disciplines:Analytical chemistry, Macromolecular and materials chemistry, Catalysis and reacting systems engineering, Chemical product design and formulation, General chemical and biochemical engineering, Process engineering, Separation and membrane technologies, Transport phenomena, Other (bio)chemical engineering