Enhanced removal of water pollutants by dielectric barrier discharge non-thermal plasma reactor

In this work it was studied the removal efficiency of several water pollutants (methylene blue, phenol, paracetamol, caffeine and ceftriaxone) by dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) non-thermal plasma (NTP) reactor. The results evidenced that using oxygen as process gas in the DBD reactor and 20 kV of applied voltage, the complete degradation and mineralization of methylene blue and ceftriaxone was achieved after only 5 min of treatment time, while 15 min were required for the complete degradation and mineralization, of phenol and paracetamol, and 25 min for the caffeine. In addition, kinetic evaluations evidenced that, for each pollutant, the degradation and mineralization occurred at the same rates, underling that the pollutants are selectively converted to carbon dioxide. For this reason, the results obtained in the present work were significantly better than those reported in the current literature about the use of non-thermal technology in the removal of organic pollutants from aqueous solutions.