Regeneration of a Coked Zeolite via Nonthermal Plasma Process: A Parametric Study

Abstract

Among alternative techniques to overcome the difficulties associated with thermal regeneration, non-thermal plasma can be considered as one of the most promising technology. The coke trapped in the zeolite micropores can be oxidized at room temperature with a low energy consumption using a dielectric barrier discharge reactor with a pin to plate geometry. The influence of various experimental parameters for coke removal efficiency and ozone production was investigated: input power, gap between the two electrodes, gas flow rate, catalyst mass and compactness. We showed that the efficiency was not strongly increased by increasing the deposited power from 23 to 36 W, but it depends strongly on the mass, so the depth of the wafer. The elimination of coke becomes more difficult as soon as the compactness is increased. The removal of coke is not uniform within the wafer, the one localized into the depth of the wafer is difficult to remove and requires higher input power (> 30 W).