Journal of Energy Chemistry ›› 2023, Vol. 86 ›› Issue (11): 318-342.DOI: 10.1016/j.jechem.2023.07.022

Previous Articles     Next Articles

Meta-analysis of CO2 conversion, energy efficiency, and other performance data of plasma-catalysis reactors with the open access PIONEER database

Antoine Saldena,b,*, Maik Buddeb,c, Carolina A. Garcia-Sotod,e, Omar Biondof,g, Jairo Baraunae,h, Marzia Faeddaa,i, Beatrice Musigh, Chloé Fromentinc, Minh Nguyen-Quangi, Harry Philpottb,d, Golshid Hasrack, Domenico Aceto, Yuxiang Caif, Federico Azzolina Jury, Annemie Bogaertsf, Patrick Da Costa, Richard Engelnb, María Elena Gálvez, Timo Gans, Tomas Garciah, Vasco Guerrac, Carlos Henriques, Monika Motaki, Maria Victoria Navarroh, Vasile I. Parvulescue, Gerard Van Rooijg, Bogdan Samojedeni, Ana Sobotab, Paolo Tosia, Xin Tu, Olivier Guaitellad,*   

  1. aDepartment of Physics, University of Trento, 38100 Povo, Italy;
    bDepartment of Applied Physics and Science Education, Eindhoven University of Technology, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands;
    cInstituto de Plasmas e Fusão Nuclear, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, 1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal;
    dLPP, CNRS, École Polytechnique, Sorbonne Université, Université Paris-Saclay, IP-Paris 91128 Palaiseau, France;
    eDepartment of Organic Chemistry, Biochemistry and Catalysis, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania;
    fResearch Group PLASMANT, Department of Chemistry, University of Antwerp, Universiteitsplein 1, Wilrijk B-2610, Belgium;
    gDIFFER, 5612AJ Eindhoven, The Netherlands;
    hInstituto de Carboquímica ICB-CSIC, Zaragoza 50018, Spain;
    iFaculty of Energy and Fuels, AGH University of Krakow, Krakow, Poland;
    jInstitut Jean le Rond d'Alembert, CNRS UMR 7190-Sorbonne Université, Saint-Cyr l'Ecole 78210, France;
    kLaboratoire Catalyse et Spectrochimie (LCS), CNRS-ENSICAEN-Université de Caen, 6 boulevard du Maréchal-Juin, 14000 Caen, France;
    lCQE, Centro de Química Estrutural, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Av. Rovisco Pais, 1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal;
    mSchool of Physical Sciences and National Centre for Plasma Science and Technology, Faculty of Science and Health, Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland;
    nASML, De Run 6501, 5504 DR Veldhoven, The Netherlands;
    oFaculty of Science and Engineering, Maastricht University, 6229 GS Maastricht, The Netherlands;
    pCNR, Istituto per la Scienza e Tecnologia dei Plasmi (ISTP), Italy;
    qDepartment of Electrical Engineering and Electronics, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 3GJ, UK
  • Received:2023-05-21 Revised:2023-06-28 Accepted:2023-07-04 Online:2023-11-15 Published:2023-11-07
  • Contact: *E-mail addresses: t.p.w.salden@tue.nl (A. Salden), olivier.guaitella@lpp.polytechnique.fr (O. Guaitella).
  • About author:Antoine Salden currently is a doctoral candidate, involved with the University of Trento (Italy) and the Eindhoven University of Technology (The Netherlands) as part of an MSCA-ITN double doctorate programme. His focus in research is time- and space-resolved diagnostics for nanosecond repetitively pulsed discharges for CO2 conversion.
    Maik Budde is a doctoral candidate, involved with the Eindhoven University of Technology (The Netherlands) and Instituto Superior Técnico Lisbon (Portugal) as part of an MSCA-ITN double doctorate programme. His research interests focus on the fundamental influence of water admixture on carbon dioxide conversion plasma.
    Carolina Alejandra Garcia-Soto currently is a post-doctoral researcher at ONERA (France) working on CH4 plasma for H2 production. She obtained a double doctorate from École Polytechnique (France) and the University of Bucharest (Romania) working on the fundamental study of plasma-catalysis interaction and the application of fluidized bed plasma reactors for the conversion of CO2, as part of an MSCA-ITN double doctorate programme.
    Olivier Guaitella is a researcher at École Polytechnique, Palaiseau (France), having received his Ph.D. degree in 2006 on the study of plasma/photocatalyst interaction for indoor air treatment. His research activities are focused on the study of molecular plasma-surface interaction at ”elevated” pressure, which corresponds to ranges from mbar to atmospheric pressure. This includes the study of ionization wave propagation on dielectric surfaces as well as the study of out-of-equilibrium vibrational kinetics. As an experimentalist, these subjects lead him to develop or adapt measurement methods to the in situ study of plasma in interaction with complex materials, catalytic or not. In particular, he makes extensive use of infrared absorption spectroscopy in the gas phase or on solid surfaces.

Abstract: This paper brings the comparison of performances of CO2 conversion by plasma and plasma-assisted catalysis based on the data collected from literature in this field, organised in an open access online database. This tool is open to all users to carry out their own analyses, but also to contributors who wish to add their data to the database in order to improve the relevance of the comparisons made, and ultimately to improve the efficiency of CO2 conversion by plasma-catalysis. The creation of this database and database user interface is motivated by the fact that plasma-catalysis is a fast-growing field for all CO2 conversion processes, be it methanation, dry reforming of methane, methanolisation, or others. As a result of this rapid increase, there is a need for a set of standard procedures to rigorously compare performances of different systems. However, this is currently not possible because the fundamental mechanisms of plasma-catalysis are still too poorly understood to define these standard procedures. Fortunately however, the accumulated data within the CO2 plasma-catalysis community has become large enough to warrant so-called “big data” studies more familiar in the fields of medicine and the social sciences. To enable comparisons between multiple data sets and make future research more effective, this work proposes the first database on CO2 conversion performances by plasma-catalysis open to the whole community. This database has been initiated in the framework of a H2020 European project and is called the “PIONEER DataBase”. The database gathers a large amount of CO2 conversion performance data such as conversion rate, energy efficiency, and selectivity for numerous plasma sources coupled with or without a catalyst. Each data set is associated with metadata describing the gas mixture, the plasma source, the nature of the catalyst, and the form of coupling with the plasma. Beyond the database itself, a data extraction tool with direct visualisation features or advanced filtering functionalities has been developed and is available online to the public. The simple and fast visualisation of the state of the art puts new results into context, identifies literal gaps in data, and consequently points towards promising research routes. More advanced data extraction illustrates the impact that the database can have in the understanding of plasma-catalyst coupling. Lessons learned from the review of a large amount of literature during the setup of the database lead to best practice advice to increase comparability between future CO2 plasma-catalytic studies. Finally, the community is strongly encouraged to contribute to the database not only to increase the visibility of their data but also the relevance of the comparisons allowed by this tool.

Key words: Open-access database on plasma-catalysis experiment, CO2 conversion, Plasma-catalysis, Carbon capture and utilisation (CCU), Energy efficiency, Specific energy input, Dielectric barrier discharge, Packed bed reactor, Methanation, Dry reforming of methane