Electrical characteristics of gliding discharge for VOC decomposition

The subject of this bachelor's thesis was to get familiar with the characteristics of plasma, its divisinon and diagnostics. In physics and chemismy plasma is considered to be, an ionized gas composed of ions, electrons (and possibly neutral atoms and molecules), which is produced by detachement of electrons from the atomic shell, or by dissociation and ionization of molecules. The plasma is often referred as the fourth state of matter. Attention was given to the description of various types of electric discharge, its characteristics and occurrence. One of the most idey known electrical discharges occurring in nature is lightning, a spark discharge, which occurs in the storm. Lightning is an electric discharge between centres of positive and negative charge of one or more clouds, between cloud and earth, or rarely between the cloud and the stratosphere. The greatest attention is paid mainly to gliding electric arc discharge, called Glide-Arc; it is a representative of on-thermal plasma formed by weakly ionized gas. It has many industrial applications, especially for its high energy efficiency, specific productivity and high selectivity of chemical reactions. Under low and atmospheric pressure, Glide-Arc represents a simple and non-expensive way of non-thermal plasma generation. The discharge is excited between two electrodes of different materials in the pressure range from very low pressures up to the pressures of the order of units of MPa. The gliding arc system consist of horn-gaps electrodes diverging in the direction of the working gas flow. After the application of DC or AC voltage, a breakdown occurs at the smallest distance between the electrodes, and a spark plasma channel drifts (“glides“) in the direction of the flowing gas. The final experimental part deals with the measurement of VA characteristics and oscillation characteristics of the current, and with the determinativ of gliding arc ignitron for selected of nitrogen and methane gases at various flow rates. The values of ignition voltage for variol mixtures of gases have been compared. Furthermore, the properties various combinations of gases at different gas flow rates have been evaluated. Measurements were carried out in the plasma laboratory of the Faculty of Chemistry BUT in the plasma reactor at the atmospheric pressure