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Review

Development of plasma pyrolysis/gasication systems for energy


efcient and environmentally sound waste disposal
L. Tang
a,
*
, H. Huang
b
, H. Hao
a
, K. Zhao
a
a
Department of Civil Engineering, Guangzhou University, Waihuanxi Road 230, Guangzhou 510006, China
b
Department of Environmental Engineering, Guangdong University of Technology, Waihuanxi Road 100, Guangzhou 510006, China
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 23 November 2012
Accepted 17 June 2013
Available online 1 July 2013
Keywords:
Thermal plasma
Pyrolysis
Gasication
Waste treatment
a b s t r a c t
As more efcient and reliable torches for thermal plasma generation have become available in recent
years, the use of thermal plasma as an energy source for pyrolysis/gasication has attracted much in-
terest, and special attention has been paid to waste treatment for resource and energy recovery. Plasma
pyrolysis/gasication systems have unique features such as the extremely high reaction temperature and
ultra-fast reaction velocity compared to traditional pyrolysis/gasication systems. Plasma pyrolysis/
gasication is therefore acknowledged as a novel pyrolysis/gasication technology with great potential in
solid waste disposal. This paper gives a comprehensive review on the development of fundamental re-
searches on plasma pyrolysis/gasication systems including direct current (DC) arc plasma system and
radio frequency (RF) plasma system with an emphasis on reactor design such as plasma xed/moving
bed reactor system, plasma entrained-ow bed reactor system and plasma spout-uid bed reactor
system.
2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Waste management is an important issue in both developed and
developing countries nowadays [1e5]. Organic waste, such as used
rubbers [6,7] and plastics waste [8e10] are among the waste ma-
terials that represent problematic wastes on one hand and a valu-
able potential as secondary raw materials on the other hand. To
alleviate part of our energy crisis and environmental degradation, it
has become imperative to make use of appropriate technologies for
the possible recovery of resources from these non-conventional
sources. As the general trend is to limit the amount of organic
matter being land-lled in the world in the near future, the disposal
alternatives left for organic waste will be incineration and recy-
cling. Incineration may utilize the energy content of organic wastes,
but is associated with the generation of SO
2
, NO
x
and other haz-
ardous emissions such as chlorinated dioxins and furans. In
particular, waste polymers are designed to be extremely resistant to
physical, chemical, and biological degradation. The possibilities for
their reuse and recycling by mechanical or chemical means are
currently very limited. The problems occurred in the earlier recy-
cling technologies based on pyrolysis, such as low gas productivity
and the wide spectrum of the decomposition products, are difcult
to overcome due to the slow rates of heating and cooling affording
only limited control of the product composition of the processes.
Thermal plasma technology has been under active development
as early as in 1950s [11]. Large thermal plasma torches were
developed in the 1950s and 1960s to generate sufcient heat to
test shields in the aerospace industry. The technology is now well
established in metallurgical processing [12], materials synthesis
[13,14], etc.
As for thermal plasma waste treatment, the most important
application is focused on destruction of toxic wastes [15e17] such
as radioactive waste rather than recycling for a long time owing to
economics issues. In recent years, thermal plasma pyrolysis of
organic wastes has received growing interests, as it is perceived to
recycle the energy and other chemicals from the waste as well as
reduce the waste volume effectively and hence has considerable
economic and environmental advantages over other disposal pro-
cesses. During the past thirty years, the use of plasma technology
for organic waste disposal has undergone extensive research and
small-scale development. It has been tested and evaluated on many
types of wastes, including automobile shredder residue, sludges,
asbestos bers, medical waste, and MSW. These research and small-
scale development effort are continuing and some small-scale
commercial plasma facilities for disposing of waste have been
operating for more than a decade. The purpose of this paper is to
review a variety of plasma system designs which have been tested
for waste treatment applications based on the use of thermal
* Corresponding author. Tel.: 86 13392659362.
E-mail address: tanglan@gzhu.edu.cn (L. Tang).
Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
Journal of Electrostatics
j ournal homepage: www. el sevi er. com/ l ocat e/ el st at
0304-3886/$ e see front matter 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.elstat.2013.06.007
Journal of Electrostatics 71 (2013) 839e847
plasmas as the high-temperature energy source, as well as techno-
economic aspects of some of the processes.
2. Plasma pyrolysis/gasication principles and technologies
Thermal plasma pyrolysis can be described as the process of
reacting a carbonaceous solid with limited amounts of oxygen at
high temperature to produce gas and solid products. In the highly
reactive plasma zone, there is a large fraction of electrons, ions and
excited molecules together with the high energy radiation. When
carbonaceous particles are injected into a plasma, they are heated
very rapidly by the plasma; and the volatile matter is released and
cracked giving rise to hydrogen and light hydrocarbons such as
methane and acetylene.
Thermal plasma gasication is partial thermal oxidation, which
results in a high proportion of gaseous products (carbon dioxide,
water, carbon monoxide, hydrogen and gaseous hydrocarbons),
small quantities of char (solid product), and ash. Steam, air or oxygen
is supplied to the reaction as an oxidizing agent. The gas produced
can be standardized in its quality and is easier and more versatile to
use (e.g. it can be used to power gas engines and gas turbines or as a
chemical feedstock for the production of liquid fuels).
The chemistry of carbonaceous solid thermal plasma pyrolysis/
gasication is quite complex. Broadly speaking, the process consists
of the following stages:
1) A very fast heating of the particles as a result of their heat ex-
change with the plasma jet.
2) An explosive liberation of volatile matter from the particles.
3) A very quick gasication of the homogeneous phase and rapid
heat and mass exchange.
4) Further gasication of char particles with various gaseous
components.
Stage 3 could be replaced by quench technology in order to
achieve certain technical purposes such as monomer recovery.
Addition of water/steam could be effectively used in Stage 4 to
promote syngas (H
2
and CO) production. High temperature com-
bined with the high heating rate of the plasma results in the
destruction of organic waste, giving rise to a gas and a solid residue
with varied properties depending on the feed characteristics and
operating conditions.
Plasma pyrolysis/gasication system designs have been
researched for more than half a century, which has resulted in the
availability of several designs at the small and large scales. They can
be classied in several ways:
By plasma generator: Thermal plasma generation can be ach-
ieved using a direct current (DC) or an alternating current (AC)
electrical discharge or using a radio frequency (RF) induction or a
microwave (MW) discharge. Then by plasma generator, there are
DC/AC arc plasma system, RF plasma system, MW plasma system
and DCeRF hybrid plasma system, etc;
By reactor design: Plasma xed/moving bed reactor system,
plasma entrained-ow bed system, spout reactor system and
spout-uid reactor system, etc;
By plasma working gas: N
2
plasma system, Ar plasma system, H
2
plasma system, mixed gas plasma system, water steam plasma
system, etc.
3. Different thermal plasma generator (torch) systems
Thermal plasma pyrolysis/gasication systemshould be properly
designed in order to realize energy-effective and cost-effective
operation. The basic component of a thermal plasma pyrolysis/
gasication system is the plasma generator (torch). Thermal
plasmas, such as those used inwaste treatment, can be generated by
many methods including: DC/AC electric discharges or transient arcs
(lamps, circuit-breakers or pulsed arcs), RF and microwave dis-
charges at near-atmospheric pressure, and laser-induced plasmas.
3.1. DC plasma system
A DC arc discharge provides a high energy density and high
temperature region between two electrodes and, in the presence of
a sufciently high gas ow, the plasma extends beyond one of the
electrodes in the form of a plasma jet. The arc plasma generators
can be divided into non-transferred arc torch and transferred arc
torch as shown schematically in Fig. 1 [18]. In a non-transferred arc
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of DC plasma torch.
L. Tang et al. / Journal of Electrostatics 71 (2013) 839e847 840
torch, the two electrodes do not participate in the processing and
have the sole function of plasma generation. In a transferred arc
reactor, the substance to be processed is placed in an electrically
grounded metallic vessel and acts as the anode, hence the reacting
material should be an electrically conductive material. Transferred
arc torches have been used widely in metallurgical processing. Arc
torches and electrodes are usually water cooled, and the average
lifetime of the electrodes ranges between 200 and 500 h of oper-
ation under oxidative conditions. DC arc plasma torches are
commonly available at power levels up to 1.5 MW. Scale-up is
possible to 6 MW [19]. The majority of thermal plasma processes
developed to date have used DC plasma generators due to the stable
arcs that they can generate, but this kind of plasma generator re-
quires expensive electronics and controls and the plasma plume is
very narrow.
3.2. RF plasma system
RF plasma torches utilize inductive or capacitive coupling to
transfer electromagnetic energy from the RF power source to the
plasma working gas. The RF plasma originally developed by Reed
[20] in 1960 as a new crystal-growing technique, received interest
in the eld of plasma chemistry. They are very compact and deliver
extraordinarily high input energy per unit volume. The ability of
the RF plasma reactor, owing to the absence of metal electrodes, to
handle virtually any chemical, opened up the way to investigations
of many chemical processes that could previously not be studied in
this way because of the rapid corrosion of plasma torch materials.
RF current and microwaves can be transferred through insulators,
so the use of external electrodes is possible, the external electrodes
can be inductive coil as shown in Fig. 2 [19]or capacitive coupling
electrode [21,22]. In this way, the electrodes are not exposed to the
severe conditions of thermal plasmas and, therefore, have a very
long lifetime. RF plasma generators are commonly available at
power levels of 100 kW. Scale-up has been demonstrated to the
1 MW range [19]. RF inductively coupled plasma torches are being
increasingly considered for a wide range of applications in the area
of materials processing. However, RF plasma systems often utilize
oscillator electronics, which have inherently low efciencies.
3.3. MW plasma system
All plasmas that are created by the injection of microwave po-
wer, i.e. electromagnetic radiation in the frequency range of
300 MHze10 GHz, typically 2.45 GHz; can in principle be called
microwave induced plasmas. This is, however, a general term
which comprises several different plasma types, e.g. cavity induced
plasmas, free expanding atmospheric plasma torches, electron
cyclonic resonators (ECR), surface wave discharges (SWD), etc.
These different plasma types operate over a wide range of condi-
tions, i.e. a pressure ranging from less than 0.1 Pa to a few atmo-
spheres, a power between a few W and several hundreds of kW,
sustained in both noble gases and molecular gases.
A microwave cavity induced plasmas torch were presented
schematically in Fig. 3 [23], usually, microwave frequency signal
generates denser plasma than RF (13.56 MHz) signal and the MW
plasma zone are larger.
3.4. DCeRF hybrid plasma system
As stated above, a RF plasma ow has many advantages such as
large plasma volume, pure plasma and low gas velocity. On the
other hand, an RF plasma ow has some disadvantages such as a
difcult ignition and an easy extinction under some operating
condition. While easy ignition and running more stably are the
prominent advantage of a DC plasma. Therefore, DCeRF hybrid
plasma owhas been expected to overcome disadvantages of an RF
plasma ow.
Kohtaro Kawajiri [24] developed A DCeRF hybrid plasma ow
reactor, this hybrid plasma is composed of an RF-ICP ow, which is
used as main plasma, and DC plasma jet mounted on the RF-ICP
torch, which used as a supplement. In a DCeRF hybrid plasma
ow, a DC plasma jet is used to ignite an RF-ICP owand maintain it
stably.
Experimental conditions are as follows: RF power and DC power
are xed at 6 kW (4 MHz, 6 kV, 1 A) and 1 kW (50 V, 25 A),
respectively. Working gas is argon. Alumina particles (diameter
10 mm) are used as tracers to measure in-ight particle
characteristics.
However, DCeRF hybrid plasma ow has a complicated ow
structure due to the strong interaction between a DC plasma jet and
Fig. 2. Schematic diagram of RF plasma torch with inductive coil. Fig. 3. Schematic diagram of MW plasma torch.
L. Tang et al. / Journal of Electrostatics 71 (2013) 839e847 841
an RF-ICP ow. Then sometimes an RF-ICP ow becomes unstable
and is extinguished in a DCeRF hybrid plasma ow. Therefore, it is
very important to further clarify the interaction between the ow
structure and the characteristics of a DCeRF hybrid plasma ow.
3.5. Comparison of plasma generators
The characteristics of different thermal plasma torches systems
have been studied extensively [18,25]. In a DC arc plasma, the
temperature in the core of the plasma plume can be greater than
10,000 K, whereas in the marginal zones, the temperature de-
creases rapidly and the average operating temperature can be as
high as 6000 K. In a RF plasma jet, the temperature at the central
channel can reach up to 8000 K. A comparison of the main features
of different plasma processes for waste treatment is given in
Table 1.
4. Different plasma pyrolysis/gasication reactor systems
A concise presentation of some previous researches using
different plasma reactors is given in Table 2. The vast majority of
plasma pyrolysis/gasication reactors were the xed and moving
bed reactor type especially in demonstration projects, ranked sec-
ondly were entrained-ow reactor type, and a small number of
research used plasma spouted/uid bed reactor. Table 3 compares
main features of various types of plasma pyrolysis/gasication
reactors.
4.1. Plasma xed/moving bed reactor
Plasma xed/moving bed reactor is the simplest type of plasma
reactor, typically, plasma xed and moving bed reactor has a bed of
solid waste particles with a solid waste feeding unit, an ash-
removal unit and a gas exit as shown in Fig. 4 [26]. For plasma
xed bed reactor, the waste was put in the center of the reactor
(batch mode, Fig. 4A), while for plasma moving bed reactor, the
waste enters the reactor through a point at the top or the side of the
reactor (continuous waste feed mode, Fig. 4B) and, after contact
with the ionized gas, the metals and ash form a liquid pool at the
bottom of the reactor. The organic portion of the waste is gasied,
rises, and exits at the top of the reactor.
Plasma xed bed and moving reactors are simple to construct
and have been commonly used in pilot plant with continuous waste
feed mode or batch mode. Their advantages include better heat
transfer to the waste and waste continual contacting with plasma,
resulting in more complete waste conversion.
There are two approaches to the current design of the plasma
xed and moving bed plasma reactors: (1) the plasma jet is located
outside of the bed, (2) the plasma jet is immersed inside of the bed.
In the rst approach, promoted by Westinghouse and Hitachi, a
water cooled non-transferred torch is located outside of the reactor.
The hot gas then ows fromthe torch into the waste reactor to melt
and gasify the MSW.
The second approach is an in-situ torch, promoted by several
suppliers. Here, the plasma torch is immersed inside the reactor
itself. This torch can either be a non-transferred torch or a transfer
torch. When using a transferred torch, the electrode extends into
the waste reactor and the electric arc is generated between the tip
of the torch and the conducting receiver, i.e., the metal slag in the
reactor bottomor a conducting wall. The lowpressure gas is heated
in the external arc. Alternatively, a non-transferred torch can be
used in which the ionized gas is created within the torch and is
projected onto the waste. In each case the electrical source for the
torch is direct current.
Both approaches have been applied to small-scale municipal
solid waste or medical waste processing units [26,27]. The plasma
gasication plant in Utashinai, Japan using external Westinghouse/
Hitachi design began processing MSW in 2002. The original design
of the plant factored in a capacity of around 170 tons per day of
MSW and automobile shredder residue (ASR). Today the plant
processes approximately 300 tons per day. The plant generates up
to 7.9 megawatt-hours (MWh) of electricity, selling about 4.3 MWh
back to the power grid. In addition a 14 tons-per-hour (336 tons per
day) Westinghouse design is reportedly in service in Rome, Italy.
A few researches which need a long time contact between the
reactant and the plasma jet also use xed bed reactor [28].
However, the overall performance of plasma xed and moving
bed which approached to a continual contacting between waste
and plasma operation limits further improvement in some specic
processes such as the processes with demand on the selectivity of
intermediate product(s).
4.2. Plasma entrained-ow bed reactor
The majority of the reported investigation of the plasma reactor
congurations were the transport-type, dilute phase reactor
(entrained-ow bed reactor) as shown in Fig. 5 [29], in which the
powder to be treatment is injected in the tail ame of a plasma jet
[29e41]. The main advantage of entrained-ow bed reactor is the
short residence time of solids in the plasma and the associated
rapid heating and quench rate attained. On the other hand,
compared to other gasesolids uidized bed reactors, entrained-
ow bed reactor has unique features such as the plug-ow
Table 1
Comparison of Different Plasma Processes for Waste Treatment.
Item DC arc plasma RF plasma Microwave plasma
Thermal RF plasma Reduced-pressure RF plasma
Temperature 5000e10000 K 3000e8000 K 1200e1700 K 1200e2000 K
Electrode erosion Yes, (1000e3000 h lifetime
in inert gas, 200e500 h lifetime
in oxidative gas)
No No No
Cooling of plasma generator
(torch) and reactor
Required Required Not required Not required
Plasma ignition Easy Difcult Easy Difcult
Plasma volume Small Medium Large Large
Gas velocity High High Low Low
Solid feeding position Downstream of plasma Upstream of plasma Upstream of plasma Upstream of plasma
Inuence of solid feeding on
plasma stability
No Yes Yes Yes
Efciency of power supply device 60e90% 40e70% 40e70% 40e70%
L. Tang et al. / Journal of Electrostatics 71 (2013) 839e847 842
reactor performance and relatively uniform ow structure.
Entrained-ow bed reactor is therefore acknowledged as a novel
multiphase ow reactor with great potential in high-severity
operated processes, such as the high temperature, ultra-short
contact time reactions with the intermediates as the desired
products. As for plasma entrained-ow bed reactor, typical process
developments in industry or research have directed to (1) coal
pyrolysis in hydrogen plasma which opens up a direct means for
producing acetylene, i.e., a new route to synthesize chemicals from
a clean coal utilization process; and (2) the new-generation re-
covery process for cracking of polymer such as PP to monomer (e.g.,
propylene).
An entrained-ow bed reactor with the highest severity oper-
ation would be the coal pyrolysis in thermal plasma for acetylene
production. This process opens up a direct means for producing
acetylene, together with the valuable carbon materials in solid state
and some ethylene, methane, hydrogen and carbon monoxide as
the secondary products. Since the complex reaction process is
operated at very high severity conditions, e.g., reaction tempera-
ture at 1500 Kew3000 K, high gas velocity and residence time in
milliseconds, the reactor design meets great challenges such as the
nozzle design for coal injection into the hot hydrogen stream, se-
vere coking problems which prohibit the continuous operation, etc.
Table 2
Different plasma pyrolysis/gasication reactor systems.
Reactor Plasma source Application Input/output Reference
Plasma moving bed reactors DC Waste treatment Municipal solid waste/C
n
H
m
R.W. Beck Inc. [26].
Plasma xed bed reactors DC, Air, 200 kW Waste treatment Solid waste/C
n
H
m
A. Vaidyanathan [27]
Plasma xed bed reactors DCeRF hybrid plasma
Ar/O
2
34 kW(DC:12, RF22)
Waste treatment Charcoal deformed
after treatment
H. Nishikawa [28]
Plasma entrained-ow bed DC Hydrocarbons pyrolysis Coal/C
2
H
2
, C
n
H
m
R.L. Bond [29]
Plasma entrained-ow bed DC Hydrocarbons pyrolysis Coal/C
2
H
2
R. Nicholson [30]
Plasma entrained-ow bed DC Hydrocarbons pyrolysis Coal/C
2
H
2
A.J.J. Patrick [31]
Plasma entrained-ow bed DC Hydrocarbons pyrolysis Coal/C
2
H
2
D. Bittner [32,33]
Plasma entrained-ow bed DC, Ar/H
2
, 80 kW Hydrocarbons pyrolysis Used old tires/C
n
H
m
J.S. Chang [34]
Plasma entrained-ow bed DC, N
2
, Ar, H
2
, 100 kW Hydrocarbons pyrolysis PP/C
n
H
m
Used old tires/C
n
H
m
, CO, CO
2
L.Tang [35]
H. Huang [36]
S.Plasma entrained-ow bed RF, N
2
, 2 kW, 13.56 MHz Hydrocarbons pyrolysis Rice straw/C
n
H
m
, CO, CO
2
Wen-Kai Tu [37,38]
Plasma entrained-ow bed RF, Ar, 15 kW, 13.56 MHz Hydrocarbons pyrolysis Polypropylene/PP, C
n
H
m
polyethylene/PE, C
n
H
m
R.R. Guddeti [39,40]
Plasma entrained-ow bed DC, N
2
, Ar, H
2
, 100 kW Hydrocarbons pyrolysis Biomass/C
n
H
m
, CO, CO
2
Zhao Z.L.[41]
Plasma spout bed DC, Ar/H
2
, Hydrocarbons pyrolysis Coal/C
n
H
m
, CO, CO
2
Bal S. et al. [42]
Plasma spout bed DC, Ar, 6.5e12 kW Hydrocarbons pyrolysis Canola seeds/C
n
H
m
, CO, CO
2
A. I. Emome [43]
Plasma spout bed DC, Ar, Materials processes Metal powder granulation M.Tsukada [44]
Plasma spout bed DC, Ar, 2 kW Materials processes C coating from CH
4
Kojima T. [45]
Plasma uid bed RF, Ar/H
2
, Hydrocarbons pyrolysis Heavy oils/C
n
H
m
, CO, CO
2
C. Motallebi [46]
Plasma spout-uid bed DC, Ar/N
2
, 70 kW Minerals processing Vanadium ore/Vanadium R.J. Munz et al. [47]
Table 3
Main features of different designs of plasma reactor system.
Aspect Plasma
xed/moving
bed
Plasma
entrained
ow bed
Plasma
spouted/uid
bed
Status Simple and proven
technology
in demonstration
project
Laboratory
testing
Relatively complex
construction and
operation
Particle size of solid
feed
Coarse Fine Medium
Gas-solid contact
and mixing
Medium Poor Good
Solid residence time Greater than 1 s Less than
0.01 s
Range from
0.1 to 1 s
Temperature control Medium Good Medium
Conversion efciency Medium Relatively low High
Scale-up potential Good Medium Limited
Fig. 4. Plasma xed and moving bed reactor.
L. Tang et al. / Journal of Electrostatics 71 (2013) 839e847 843
So far, this process has not been commercialized since the early
proposals by Bond et al. [29], Nicholson and Littlewood [30].
Several companies had been working on pilot-plant experiments
on coal pyrolysis (e.g., Patrick and Gannon [31]; Bitter et al. [32,33]),
but it is hard to nd the recent update on this process development.
While there are a bit of researches which concern waste treatment
using this reactor type in recent years [34e38].
The electrode pollution of DC plasma limits further improve-
ment in some specic processes, for example, those with demand
on the purity of product. To achieve selective intermediate product
and to avoid unwanted electrode impurity pollution, Guddeti et al.
[39,40] developed an induction-coupled plasma (ICP) reactor
combined with rapid quenching (1000 K/s), plasma plate power
being in the range of 10e20 kVA. This ICP reactor can depolymerize
polymer into monomer. It is characterized by high heating rate and
rapid quenching of the vapor to terminate the secondary conver-
sion of the products.
In this system, a Tekna (model PL-35) ICP torch in conjunction
with a Lepel Corp. (model T-15-3-MC5-TL1) power supply was
used to generate the plasma jet. The oscillating magnetic eld
generated by the power supply coupled energy into the owing
argon gas to generate a thermal plasma. The reactor pressure was
maintained at nominally 1 atm. The plastic powder was uidized
in a ow of argon carrier gas and fed into the center of the ICP
torch. The plasma jet exiting the torch was quenched by a cold
argon jet.
Plastic species, plasma plate power, central gas ow rate, probe
gas ow rate, powder feed rate and the interaction between the
quench gas ow rate and powder input were the key process pa-
rameters affecting the yield of hydrocarbons in the product gas
stream. In a typical mass balance, the solid conversion of PP to gas
product is about 78%, the main gas product is propylene (93.7%).
While, in the research of ICP pyrolysis of PE, the gaseous products
obtained were mostly mixtures of propylene (53.4%) and ethylene
(22.2%), together with smaller amounts of other hydrocarbons.
Additional experiments involving variations of the residence time
of the polymeric powder in the plasma zone have been carried out
to obtain higher yields of ethylene in the product gas stream. In
addition, more work is required to investigate other types of
quenching systems.
To study the degree of pyrolysis at different times and analyze
different product in different stage of a plasma pyrolysis process, an
arc plasma entrained-ow reactor was tested by Zengli Zhao et al.
[41]. The arc plasma generator was located at the upper part of the
reactor apparatus. The solid material injector was located belowthe
arc plasma generator; solid powders from a screw feeder were
injected using carrier gas (argon) into the plasma jet zone. The
reacting plasma jet/biomass mixture then entered an extended
reaction zone. Four sampling spots were made in different posi-
tions of the reaction cavity corresponding to different residence
times and core temperatures. The spacing between two sampling
points is 200 mm.
The major components in gaseous product have been found to
be H
2
, CO, C
2
H
2
and CH
4
. A maximumcarbon conversion of 79% and
a maximum oxygen conversion of 72% from the biomass feed to
gaseous products have been obtained under these experimental
conditions. The specic power consumption in this experimental
plasma apparatus under optimum conditions was estimated to be
3.7 kW h/Nm
3
(H
2
CO).
However, its major disadvantages are its low energy efciency,
which results from the fact that all the radiation and an important
part of the convection and conduction losses cannot be
recuperated.
4.3. Plasma spout/spout-uid bed reactor
The basic principal of the plasma spout bed is essentially similar
to a standard spout bed. The main difference, however, lies in the
fact that in plasma spout bed as shown in Fig. 6 [42e45], a DC
plasma jet forms the spout which provides heat for the process, a
potential advantage of using a plasma spout bed is that higher
operating temperatures can be attained (thus further reducing
residence time and capital cost). A previous study showed that a
plasma spouted bed gave high degrees of conversion with short
residence times but suffered from problems of bed stability.
Plasma spout-uid bed reactor as shown in Fig. 7 [46,47] is a
combination of a uidized bed and plasma spouted bed by
combining the plasma ow of the single central opening (spouted
bed) with the auxiliary uid ow through the distributor plate
Fig. 5. Plasma entrained-ow bed.
Fig. 6. Plasma spout bed.
L. Tang et al. / Journal of Electrostatics 71 (2013) 839e847 844
(uidized bed). Spout-uid bed reactors used for combustion or
gasication are reported to overcome the limitation of spouted bed
and uidized bed by providing higher rate of mixing, better solid
uid contact, even uid ow distribution resulting to the minimi-
zation of dead zones, better solid uid contact, improved mass and
heat transfer characteristics.
Fluidized and spouted beds are characterized by perfect mixing
of the particles (i.e., low temperature gradient, large thermal dif-
fusivities), high rate of heat and mass transfer, continuous opera-
tion with solid, high apparent density of solid; on the other hand,
plasma ows are composed of very reactive chemical species and
can provide ultra high temperature sources for solid heating. Thus
the coupling of these two systems gives a lot of opportunities for:
(1) hydrocarbon pyrolysis; (2) minerals processing; (3) materials
processing. Concerning plasma generators, DC arc torch, inductive
plasma torch and microwaves systems were used. But in the main
cases DC arc torches were associated with minerals process or
hydrocarbon pyrolysis in which high temperature treatment are
concerned, and RF generators were used for gas and materials
synthesis, as shown in Table 2 [42e47].
Plasma spouted and spout-uid beds have been reported by
Goldberger W. M. et al. [48] as early as 1963 for quenching plasma
reaction species in uidized bed. Pyrolysis of methane was then
studied by Amouroux and Talbot [49] using a R.F. plasma generator
located below the uidization distributor of beds composed of
sand, zirconia and graphite. Quenching rates of about 0.410
6
K/s
were measured and maximum acetylene conversion yields of 50%
were obtained with pure methane and graphite particles uidized
bed. Bal et al. [42] reported experimental results about coal py-
rolysis in plasma spouted bed using a DC argon-hydrogen plasma in
1971.
Heat transfer in standard spout bed was researched by Gold-
berger W. M. [48], Amouroux J. [49] and G. Flamant [50]. Plasma/
particle heat transfer and bed effective axial and radial conductiv-
ities (l
a
, l
r
) were determined in Ref. [50]. More than 90% of plasma
energy is transferred to particles with nitrogen and about 70% with
argon. Effective thermal properties l
a
and l
r
, were identied by
numerical tting between experimental temperature distributions
and calculated ones. An intensive axial mixing was shown, l
a
is
three orders of magnitude larger than in packed bed. Four regions
are well identied from the spout axis to the column wall in this
research. 1) The core of the spout where temperature is maximum
(its size is about the injector diameter), 2) The transition zone
(included in the so-called spout) affected by a large thermal
gradient, 3) The annulus where some signicant temperature
variation is obtained, 4) The vicinity of the wall concerned with
temperature decrease due to heat losses.
The main difculties pointed out by investigation of plasma
spouted bed are agglomeration and particle attrition. Better un-
derstanding of the complex hydrodynamic of the plasma spouted
bed is needed to solve the problem.
5. Different plasma working gas systems
In many plasma generator devices, gases such as Ar, He, H
2
and
N
2
are commonly used as plasma working gas. Heat and mo-
mentum transfer of the plasma are inuenced by the type and
properties of the gas selected. The gas selected can be an inert
carrier gas or can take part in the chemical reaction. Furthermore,
the gases used for plasma applications should be inexpensive and
have good heating value. Since the material treatment by plasma
reactor usually has high carbon content, plasma gasication in the
presence of steam, with CO and H
2
as the main products might be
attractive if an appropriate carbonaceous material was available.
Considerable researches [28,51] have used steam reforming to gain
this end. Adding water steam in the reaction system, synthesis gas
can be produced fromwaste polymer by thermal plasma pyrolysis.
An essentially large volume of CO is generated under the process
than under nitrogen or argon plasma pyrolysis, and at the same
time, H
2
concentration and total gas yield are increased signi-
cantly. Beside reactions of the gaseous hydrocarbon and steam,
the reaction between carbon and steam is believed to play
an important role in the process according to the reaction:
C H
2
O /CO H
2
.
Beside the means of adding water steam in the reaction region,
using water steam or other oxidizing gas as plasma working gas
directly which take part in the chemical reaction is more suitable
means. Table 4 present recent researches on special plasma gas
system.
5.1. Mixed gasewater steam plasma
While, in many industry applications, plasma generator elec-
trodes should have long life and the gases used should not attack
and damage the electrodes. For example, in DC/AC plasmas system,
it is difcult and unsuitable to using pure water steam as plasma
Fig. 7. Plasma spout-uid bed reactor.
L. Tang et al. / Journal of Electrostatics 71 (2013) 839e847 845
working gas, N
2
and Ar are the usually used plasma working gas for
the stability, however, the product gas contains a large amount of
nitrogen or Ar, which lowers the heating value of the syngas pro-
duced. If pure O
2
or water steam is used as the plasma gas, the
heating value of syngas will increase.
Currently, a mixture of water steam or N
2
and Ar can be used as
the DC/AC plasma working gas [52e55]. A special novel type of DC
plasma torch with the electric arc stabilized by water vortex in
combination with gas ow [54] has been developed at the IPP
Prague. The plasma gas is a mixture of steamwith a small amount of
argon. The hybrid torch is composed of two stabilizing chambers.
Plasma produced in the cathode arc chamber with gas stabilization
enters the second chamber with water stabilization. The gas owin
the cathode part of the torch protects the cathode tip and hence the
consumable carbon cathode used in water torches can be replaced
by a xed tungsten cathode. Arc characteristics are dominated by
processes in the water stabilized part of the arc column which is
much longer than the cathode section. Due to the principle of arc
stabilization by a water vortex the ow rate of plasma gas is very
low, plasma enthalpy is more than 200 MJ/kg, and mean plasma
temperature more than 15 000 K. The hybrid gas/water stabilization
provides the possibility of controlling the parameters of the plasma
jet and the plasma composition in a wide range fromhigh enthalpy,
low density plasmas typical for water stabilized torches to lower
enthalpy, higher density plasmas generated in gas stabilized
torches. Both the high temperature and the composition of the
plasma generated in argon/water torches are highly advantageous
for waste treatment process. The other characteristic feature of this
hybrid torch is very low mass ow rate of plasma. As a lowamount
of plasma carries high energy, the power needed for heating of
plasma to reaction temperature is very low and the efciency of
utilizing plasma power for waste destruction is extremely high.
A techno-economic evaluation showed that by using a high
pressure steam plasma to pressurize the reactor, this synthesis gas
could be used in the design, with further development of small-
scale methanol plants competitive with the conventional process
and suitable for the production of methanol-derived chemicals.
5.2. Water steam plasma
In RF or MW plasma systems without electrode corrosion
problem, oxidizing gases such as water steam or O
2
can be used as
plasma working gas [56,57]. H. Sekiguchi developed a MW steam
plasma system [57]: The plastic microwave plasma treatment
experiment was conducted with 2.45 GHz microwave power sup-
ply giving a power of 600 W. 20 mol.% Steamwas heated and added
into the plasma supporting gas of Ar. A quartz tube was inserted in
the microwave wave-guide in which electromagnetic eld was
concentrated and the plasma was generated. The end of the tube
(13 mm in length) was inserted in a stainless reactor. The sample of
PE weighing 1 g was put in the reactor and the plasma treatment
was carried out for maximum 5 min in batch operation.
When steam was added, the plasma changed its color from
blueewhite to reddish. As for the emission spectra from the
plasma, several high peaks in Ar plasma between 700 and 850 nm
were originated from Ar excitations. For the steam addition, the
intensities of these spectra were reduced and the spectra derived
fromH
2
Odissociationwere observed instead at approximately 300,
650 and 780 nm, respectively, corresponding to OH, H and O.
Especially, strong OH peak appeared as compared with H and O.
The plastics mostly consist of carbon and hydrogen, so that the
treatment of plastics by the steamplasma likely produces synthesis
gas containing COand H
2
similarly to the reforming of hydrocarbon.
Moreover in treating PVC by the steam plasma, Cl can be xed with
H into HCl, which will be easily absorbed with a scrubber. Hence,
the proposed method is to produce synthesis gas and to treat
halogen components simultaneously.
5.3. Methane plasma
Not only water steam, but also other gas such as methane can be
used as plasma working gas in microwave plasma reaction for
special purpose. O. Kamei et al. [58] using a microwave plasma
reaction under successive supply of methane to directly converting
brown coal to relatively important fuels and synthesis gases
(acetylene, hydrogen and carbon monoxide) in a single step, while
simultaneously upgrading the carbon content of the residue
without the use of high-pressure hydrogen. Experiments have been
conducted on the use of methane plasma.
6. Concluding remarks
Most plasma reactors described in this paper are admittedly
still at the experimental stage. They are, however, representative of
the search for new plasma applications in the waste plasma
treatment eld which is currently going on. Although important
research progress in this area has been made in recent years, there
are still considerable technical challenges to be faced in developing
and modifying thermal plasma pyrolysis processes for industrial
applications. Through the above analysis, the plasma spout-uid
bed reactor offers interesting characteristics as an efcient gas
solid contactor which may nd wide applications in the area of
pyrolysis/gasication of solid carbonaceous material such as
biomass and organic solid waste. The DC plasma jet forms the
spout which provides heat for the process and this spout is sur-
rounded by a conventional uidized bed, which uses water steam
as the uid gas in order to obtain products of high additional value.
Solid materials enter the plasma zone from upper part of the
system, then the combination of plasma jet and superheating
water steam can make the particle spout upward, then big parti-
cles separate from the air current because of gravity, and get back
to the recirculation region. Thus big particles have sufcient resi-
dence time in the pyrolysis zone until accomplishing the pyrolysis
reaction. Using water steamas the uid gas not only can reduce the
temperature of the reactor wall, but also obtain synthetic gas by
reaction between the water steam and the carbon. So a plasma
spout-uid bed may be a more suitable reactor system for organic
waste treatment. The increasingly stringent legislation on the
Table 4
Different plasma working gas systems.
Plasma source Plasma gas Application Input/output Reference
DC plasma, (100 kW) Ar(3.5 nm
3
/h)-Air(30 nm
3
/h)-water steam (18 kg/h) Hydrocarbons pyrolysis PE/H
2
, CO, CH
4
, CO
2
Hyun Seo Park [52]
DC plasma (22e25 kW) Air(0.7e1.0 g/s)ewater steam (0.4e0.8 g/s) Hydrocarbons pyrolysis Coal/C
n
H
m
Kolyo K. [53]
DC plasma Arewater steam Waste treatment Biomass/synthesis gas G. Van Oost [54]
RF plasma N
2
ewater steam, 2 kW, 13.56 MHz Hydrocarbons pyrolysis PE/C
n
H
m
Used old tires/C
n
H
m
, CO, CO
2
L. Tang [55]
H. Huang [56]
MW plasma (2.8 kW) Pure water steam Hydrocarbons reforming C
6
H
14
,H
2
O/H
2
, H
2
O, CH
4
, CO
2
H. Sekiguchi [57]
MW plasma (300 W) Pure methane Hydrocarbons pyrolysis Hydrocarbons pyrolysis Osamu K. [58]
L. Tang et al. / Journal of Electrostatics 71 (2013) 839e847 846
treatment of waste streams and the limitations of conventional
technologies render waste treatment technologies such as haz-
ardous wastes vitrication, energy and material recycle fromwaste
using plasma technology more and more attractive. All of these
will require novel and imaginative reactor designs and plasma
systems for their development.
Acknowledgment
We thank the support from the National Natural Science Foun-
dation of China (51078092) and "Yangcheng scholar" project of
Education Bureau of Guangzhou (10A039G).
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