The rapid exhaustion of fossil fuel reserves and the adverse effects of climate change caused by increasing global energy demands have attracted great attention and pose serious threats to humankind. The emergence of new energy technologies is crucial and essential to reduce the negative effects of climate change and to ensure global energy security based on sustainable and renewable energy sources.
Recently, the combination of cold plasma and heterogeneous catalysis (known as plasma-catalysis) has been regarded as a promising and emerging technology for environmental clean-up and for the conversion of carbon and nitrogen sources (e.g. CH4, CO2 and N2) into value-added fuels and chemicals (e.g. hydrogen and liquid fuels) at low temperatures and ambient pressure. Plasma-catalysis has great potential to generate a synergistic effect, which can activate the catalysts at low temperatures and improve the activity and stability of the catalysts, resulting in the remarkable enhancement of reactant conversion, selectivity and yield of end-products, as well as the energy efficiency of the process. The idea of plasma-catalysis has also been extended to the synthesis, preparation and modification of catalysts to improve the activity and stability of the catalysts.
In this lecture, we will start with the background & principles of plasma catalysis and then show a number of important applications of plasma-catalysis in environmental clean-up and the synthesis the synthesis of fuels and chemicals: i) oxidation of VOCs; ii) reforming of tars from biomass gasification; iii) methane activation; iv) CO2 conversion.
