Toluene removal over TiO2-BaTiO3 catalysts in an atmospheric dielectric barrier discharge

Non-thermal plasma (NTP) combined with catalysts has been regarded as a promising approach for the removal of VOCs. In the present work, a series of TiO 2 -BaTiO 3 catalysts were prepared by simple mechanical mixing. The performance of the catalysts on degradation of high concentration of toluene was investigated in a dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma system . The effects of input power, mass ratio of Ti/Ba, gas flow rate and the initial concentration of toluene on the removal of toluene and the selectivity of CO 2 as well as the energy yield have been investigated. The toluene removal efficiency and CO 2 selectivity increased obviously in the plasma-catalytic system compared with the single NTP system. The removal efficiency of toluene with different catalysts abided by the following rules: Ti1Ba1 > Ti2Ba1 > Ti1Ba2 > BaTiO 3  > TiO 2 . The reason for the best performance of Ti1Ba1 is that TiO 2 offered the providential number of electron-hole pairs while BaTiO 3 supplied the fitting number of high energy electrons . Additionally, the synergistic effects between TiO 2 and BaTiO 3 also reached its maximum in this case. The concentration of O 3 in the exhaust gas was also detected and it reached the lowest point when Ti1Ba1 catalyst was packed in the discharge chamber.