Impact of design parameters on the performance of non-thermal plasma air purification system

•Effect of different design parameters on the system performance are investigated.•Energy consumption and the rate of ozone generation of a DBD plasma are optimized.•Ground electrode configuration is a dominant parameter on ozone generation not its type.•Larger inner electrode results in an earlier plasma ignition and higher ozone amount for the same SIE.•Increasing the reactor size requires larger SIE amounts to reach the same ozone level.

In this study, a dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) non-thermal plasma experimental set-up is utilized to investigate the effect of design parameters including the configuration and type of electrodes as well as the size of the reactor on the energy consumption and the rate of ozone generation. Results show that increasing the residence time by applying a larger length of the inner electrode causes an earlier plasma ignition, as well as formation of larger amounts of ozone for a given specific input energy (SIE). Changing the configuration and the type of the ground electrode shows that this electrode configuration is a dominant parameter for enhancing the energy yield in the plasma reactor. Furthermore, it was noted as the size of the reactor is increased, by increasing the gap between the electrodes, higher level of SIE is needed to reach the same level of ozone concentration.