Effective degradation of organic water pollutants by atmospheric non-thermal plasma torch and analysis of degradation process.

The paper reports the use of atmospheric non-thermal plasma torch as a catalyst for degradation of various organic pollutants dissolved in water. A flow of He mixed with air was used to produce the dielectric barrier discharge (DBD), at the tip of the torch, using pulsed electric excitation at 12 kV. The torch, operated at a power of 750 mW/mm, was seen to completely degrade the aqueous solutions of the pollutants namely methylene blue (MB), methyl orange (MO) and rhodamine-B (RB), at around 10 M concentrations, the concentration of polluants is one order higher than of routinely used heterogeneous photocatalytic reactions, within 10 min of irradiation time at room temperature.