Plasma technology for the abatement of pollutants emitted by mechanical-biological treatment plants

This paper aims at analysing the engineering effort that must be performed moving from a preliminary experience of dielectric barrier discharge reactor to a pilot one. Useful indications were collected by a previous study on a laboratory-scale reactor. In that research, methyl ethyl ketone (MEK) was taken as reference for the typical emissions from a mechanical-biological treatment (MBT) plant. The removal efficiency of MEK was measured by gradually increasing treating time and power. As a result, the abatement percentage was linearly dependent upon time and the ratio between increase of efficiencies is similar to the ratio between increase of power. Thus, setting power and time could be an easy procedure for reaching target efficiencies in the planned pilot plant. Moreover, increasing the speed of the convective flow could represent an interesting solution to obtain higher removal efficiency. In view of the development of the pilot plant, the application of this technology to a biocell could represent a suitable opportunity to evaluate the performances of the device with real emissions from MBTs.