Application of plasma chemistry for gas cleaning is gaining prominence in recent years, mainly from an energy efficiency point of view. In this paper we conducted a comparative study of NO/NOx removal using two different types of dielectric barrier discharge electrodes, wirecylinder reactor, pipe-cylinder reactor. Investigations were first carried out with synthetic gases to obtain the baseline information on the NO/NOx removal with respect to the two geometries studied. Further, experiments were carried out with raw diesel exhaust under loaded condition. A high NOx removal efficiency of 90% was observed for the pipe-cylinder reactor as compared to that of 53.4% for the wire-cylinder reactor. Furthermore, for the same energy consumed per NO molecule (about 73 eV/NO molecule), the removal efficiency increased from 67% for the wirecylinder to about 98% for the pipe-cylinder which was quite appreciable.

An analysis has been made on the discharge plasma coupled with an adsorbent system for NOx removal. The cascaded plasma-adsorbent system may be perceived as a better alternative for the existing adsorbent-based abatement system in the industry. In this study the exhaust is sourced from a diesel generator set. It was observed that better NO removal in a plasma reactor can be made possible by achieving higher average fields and subsequent NO2 removal can be improved using an adsorbent system connected in cascade with the plasma system. The paper describes various findings pertaining to these comparative analyses.