Degradation of organic pollutants in water by non-thermal plasma.
A known concentration of different organic pollutants will be prepared in water and subjected
to plasma treatment. Non-thermal plasma discharge (Glidarc) will be used to treat contaminated
solution. Different gas mixtures will be tested to find out the most suitable combination.
Different air flow rates will be applied with the help of an air flowmeter. Plasma discharge will
be applied to the surface of the test solution from various distances. By doing these
experiments we will optimise the best conditions which are most efficient to degrade the
pollutants in the test solution. A cooling system using water as cooling medium will be used
during plasma treatment process to avoid the heating of the target pollutants. The plasma
treatment experiments will be conducted at various time intervals so that we can determine the
rate constants of the degradation processes, hence the half life times of the pollutants. The
plasma treatment experiments will be repeated in presence of a photocatalyst and the samples
will be analysed. The influence of other non-thermal plasma configurations such as dielectric
barrier discharge (DBD) and spark discharge on the degradation of organic pollutants in the
water will also be investigated.
The efficiencies of the decomposition processes will be determined by measuring target
pollutants conversion as a function of the treatment time. Presence of the intermediates can be
confirmed by HPLC analyses. Structure of the intermediates will be confirmed by HPLC/MS
analyses. For this we will use SPE liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry
(LC/LC-/MS/MS). These analyses will be performed at TSQ Ultra MS/MS (Thermo Fisher
Scientific, San Jose, CA, USA) coupled with Accela 1250 and Accela 600 HPLC pumps (Thermo
Fisher Scientific, San Jose, CA, USA) and HTS-XT autosampler (CTC Analytics AG, Zwingen,
Switzerland).