Water plasma generation under atmospheric pressure for HFC destruction

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the decomposition process of hydrofluoroethylene (HFC-134a) by water plasmas. The water plasma was generated by DC arc discharge with a cathode of hafnium embedded into a copper rod and a nozzle-type copper anode. The advantage of the water plasma torch is the generation of 100%-water plasma by DC discharge. The distinctive steam generation leads to the portable light-weight plasma generation system that does not require the gas supply unit, as well as the high energy efficiency owing to the nonnecessity of the additional water-cooling. HFC-134a was injected into the water plasma jet to decompose it in the reaction tube. Neutralization vessel was combined to the reaction tube to absorb F2 and HF generated from the HFC-134a decomposition. The decomposition was performed with changing the feed rate of HFC-134a up to 185 mmol/min. The decomposition efficiency of 99.9% can be obtained up to 0.43 mmol/kJ of the ratio of HFC-134a feed rate to the arc power, hence the maximum feed rate was estimated to be 160 g/h at 1 kW of the arc power.