Effective utilization of electrical discharges for hydrogen production

FUEL 56

Yasushi Sekine, ysekine@waseda.jp, Masahiko Matsukata, mmatsu@waseda.jp, and Eiichi Kikuchi. Department of Applied Chemistry, Waseda University, 3-4-1 Okubo, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 169-8555, Japan
We examined a hybrid system of non-equilibrium plasma and catalyst to achieve lower reaction temperature and higher conversion than existing catalytic process. And the effect of discharge on the catalytic reaction was investigated by decomposition of ethanol. Three kinds of reactions like as catalytic reaction (Mode I), non-equilibrium discharge reaction (Mode II) and hybrid reaction of non-equilibrium discharge and catalyst (Mode III) were performed in this research. As a result, synergic effect of non-equilibrium discharge and catalyst was confirmed and conversion greatly increased over 523K. Energy efficiency (LHV based) of reaction using discharge was over 90 %. So, reactions using non-equilibrium discharge were very efficient process.