Discharge Plasma Cascaded with Fly Ash for Removal of NOx in Biodiesel Exhaust: A Feasibility Study
Discharge Plasma Cascaded with Fly Ash for Removal of NOx in Biodiesel Exhaust: A Feasibility Study
Anusuya Bhattacharyya1, Sanjana Kerketta2, M. Shekhar Kumar3, and B. S. Rajanikanth1
1Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, India
2National Institute of Technology, India
3Central Power Research Institute, India
Abstract- This paper addresses two aspects: biodiesel exhaust treatment with electric discharge plasma and utilization of fly ash as an adsorbent in cascade with plasma reactor. Biodiesel is a fuel, which is known to have a number of advantages over normal diesel such as lower concentrations of soot, particulate matter and hydrocarbons, easy renewability and availability, to name a few. However, the concentration of oxides of nitrogen (NOx) in biodiesels is higher than that associated with normal diesel. In the present work, a cascaded discharge plasma-adsorbent system was adopted to enhance NOx removal from diesel engine exhaust. The adsorbent is carefully prepared from the fly ash, a well-known industrial waste byproduct in thermal power plants. The paper describes the method of preparation of the fly ash pellets suitable for NOx adsorption in cascade with discharge plasma, a novel initiative taken up in this work. The synergistic effect of the fly ash adsorbent in the presence of discharge plasma is discussed for a couple of reactor designs.
Keywords- NOx removal, fly ash, bio-diesel, non thermal plasma, dielectric barrier discharge