This work deals with the development of a VOC removal method by non-thermal plasma which has several advantages including flexibility, compactness and limited investment costs. Further development of this technology needs to overcome major drawbacks such as high energy consumption for high flow rate treatment and the presence of by-products. The first part of the study focuses on the method of discharge energy deposition and the search for optimization of the process energy efficiency. Development of experimental and measurement tools, in particular for the determination of the electrical power injected into the discharge were carefully carried out. The effect of voltage waveform, signal frequency and electrode shape were investigated. The results show that no energy efficiency improvement could be brought by variation of these parameters and that only energy density is important in the gas treatment process. The second part of the study was devoted to the study of conversion of three pollutants (acetone, ethanol and methylethylketone). Formation of by-products was analyzed and a kinetic scheme is proposed for ethanol conversion. To decrease the level of by-products at the reactor outlet, the association between cold plasma and catalysis was investigated. Catalysis was found to allow an improvement in the oxidation of the pollutants and of the discharge by-products. The last part of this work focused on results obtained with a large flow rate plasma reactor to confirm extension of laboratory scale results to larger equipment. Results confirmed that the extension of low flow rate experimental results is possible.
