Executive Summary : | The increased usage of diesel fuel of late has led the researchers to pay more attention towards abatement of increased emission of various pollutants, which includes major pollutants such as oxides of nitrogen (NOx), oxides of carbon (COx), Oxides of sulphur (SOx) and minor pollutants such as hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds etc in the engine exhaust. The focus is therefore, lies in providing a technique that is economical, feasible and long lasting. The electric discharge based non thermal plasma is one such possible technique. The technique has shown promising result at laboratory level which builds the roadmap of further adoption of the technique into reality. High removal efficiency, less temperature and low cost are some of the major focus on designing the system. One need high specific energy with less temperature and less energy consumption to reduce the pollutant at molecular level. Currently efforts are on to decompose CO2 to produce CO economically and efficiently. The Diesel exhaust consist of various gaseous pollutants such as oxides of nitrogen, oxides of carbon, oxides of Sulphur, hydrocarbons etc, which are deadly harmful when left untreated for longer duration. Herewith, I am proposing to utilize or recycle the CO2 present in diesel exhaust for possible dissociation into CO under electrical discharge-based plasma catalysis technique where intense discharges occurring in a plasma activated ferroelectric pellets will be made use of. The advantages of using the electrical discharge based technique can be accounted for its compactness, low weight due to high power density, the minimal cost and ease of power supply design, whereas utilization of industrial wastes such as red mud, fly ash etc in plasma catalysis process provides an additional benefit as these are available freely and abundantly. The major challenges in this proposition are oxygen rich environment of diesel exhaust, reactions associated with moisture present in diesel exhaust and production of unwanted compounds such as N2O, NO, NO2, HNO2, HNO3 etc. The proposal aims to tackle the above mentioned challenges and to generate CO which is also known as industrial gases because of its exhaustive application such as in steel and metal industries, chemical industries, energy sector, pharma sectors and semiconductor industries to name a few. The electrical discharge based plasma catalysis technique is one of the promising technology in view of inexpensiveness, less energy and low temperatures (ambient temperature) associated. Additionally, the proposed study will also aim at reducing the greenhouse gas (CO2) indirectly. |