CONFERENCE SUPPORT FOR THE 4TH INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON NON THERMAL PLASMA (May 10-14, 2004)

Florida State University, Tallahassee FL

Investigators

Abstract

The 4th International Symposium on Non-thermal Plasma Technologies for Pollution Control and Sustainable Energy Development will be held in Panama City Beach, Florida, May 10-14, 2004. It is devoted to advancing the field of non-thermal plasma processes for environmental protection, including applications to air and water treatment and to sustainable energy processing. This meeting is intended to assemble experts from all over the world to present recent advances to the field and to discuss the prospects of these technologies for future development and study. The objectives of this meeting are therefore: 1) to assemble key research groups working on the environmental applications of non-thermal plasma including air and water treatment and sustainable energy processing, 2) to provide a stimulating environment to foster scientific exchange and discussion of the most important current issues related to the development of this area of technology, and 3) to conduct extensive discussions on the directions for future work and development. This award provides supplemental funding to support this conference through some travel and publication costs. This conference can lead to broader impacts as follows. The conference will enhance and promote collaboration among scientists and engineers from large variety of disciplines and from a wide range of nations. It will engage a number of graduate students, and particularly women and under-represented minorities in order to develop the next generation of researchers. The intellectual merit of the conference is reflected in the high quality of the participating researchers representing major laboratories from top institutions worldwide. It will provide useful input to NSF as a guide to grant investments in this evolving field. A non-thermal plasma is a plasma, or collection of free and randomly moving ions, that is characterized by low background temperature, or energy, in combination with highly energetic electrons. Typically, non-thermal plasma can be produced using a wide variety of high voltage electrical discharges (e.g., AC, DC, and pulsed) as well as with electron beams. The largest commercial application of non-thermal plasma in the environmental field is the use of AC dielectric barrier discharge reactors for producing ozone, generally, subsequently used in water treatment. Other commercial applications of non-thermal plasma include flue gas treatment from power plants and incinerators and indoor air cleaning. Over the last 15 years there has been considerable interest and research devoted to testing, evaluating, and developing non-thermal plasmas for other applications. These other applications include treatment of volatile and hazardous organic compounds in gases, treatment of nitrogen oxides and particulate matter from the exhaust of mobile sources, treatment of organic, inorganic, and biological matter in contaminated water, synthetic chemical processes, and destruction of hazardous chemical and biological agents. While the technology for ozone generation is fairly mature, developments for other applications are intensively under investigation due to the high sensitivity of reactor performance on the reactor design and operating conditions (e.g., gas and/or liquid composition, nature of applied electric field, addition of catalysts, and other factors). Recent developments in the fields of plasma-catalysis, gas-liquid discharge phenomena, and hydrocarbon reforming from natural gas are particularly promising and can contribute to the development of useful and efficient technologies.