82 Electrical Discharge Plasma for Activation of Adsorbent and Catalytic Materials for Diesel Engine Exhaust Treatment R. Rajagopala*, N. Jagadisha, A. D. Srinivasan Department of Electrical & Electronics Engineering, Sri Jayachamarajendra College of Engineering, Mysore - 570 006, Karnataka, India. Received 31 st March 2016; Revised 10 th May 2016; Accepted 11 th May 2016 ABSTRACT A detailed investigation on the activation of materials like adsorbent and catalyst by electrical discharge plasma is carried out. This property has been used for the treatment of diesel engine exhaust. For the purpose of investigation, several confgurations are used. The results are discussed and a comprehensive comparison of all the techniques has been made. The effectiveness of the technique with regard to pollutants control and byproduct reduction is discussed. A high NOx removal effciency is achieved when double step electrical discharge plasma activates red mud catalyst and double step electrical discharge plasma activates MS13X adsorbent. In double step electrical discharge plasma activated catalyst technique, the red mud catalyst was operated without any additional HC or ammonia at 400°C, whereas the double step electrical discharge plasma activated adsorbent technique was operated at low temperature (<200°C). Key words: Electrical discharge plasma, Diesel engine exhaust, Pollutants control, MS13X adsorbent, Red mud catalyst, Double step, NOx removal, and byproduct reduction. 1. INTRODUCTION Controlling emissions from combustion engines particularly from diesel driven ones is a challenge to the researchers across the globe. In the case of diesel engines, despite the modifcations in engine design and improvement in after treatment technologies, a large amount of NOx and CO continue to emit and attempts to develop new catalysts to reduce these pollutants have been so far less successful. The electrical discharge plasma (non-thermal plasma) is a prominent non- conventional technique, which can produce chemically active species that can facilitate the removal of NOx and other pollutants within diesel exhaust [1-3]. Further, electrical discharge plasma activates catalysis and adsorption when it is combined with a catalyst and an adsorbent. Plasma associated catalysis and adsorption are gaining lot of importance [4-9]. The objective of the study is to investigate the activation of materials like adsorbent and catalyst by an electrical discharge plasma. This property has been used for the treatment of diesel engine exhaust. For the purpose of investigation, several confgurations are used. The results are discussed and a comprehensive comparison of all the techniques has been made. The effectiveness of the technique with regard to pollutants removal and byproduct reduction is discussed. The plasma and adsorbent reactors are operated at room temperature while catalyst reactors are operated at high temperature. 2. EXPERIMENTAL In this section, experimental setup and materials used in this work are discussed in detail. 2.1. Experimental Setup The schematic of the diesel engine exhaust treatment is shown in Figure 1 using double step electrical discharge plasma activated adsorbent/catalytic technique. A 3.3 kW diesel engine was used as the exhaust source. The whole of the exhaust from the engine was not treated in view of infrastructure limitation in the laboratory. Further, as our objective is to examine the underlying principle involved in the exhaust treatment, only a part of the main exhaust from the engine was treated. A 30 kV pulse source was used in the studies. Throughout the experiments, the frequency of the *Corresponding Author: E-mail: rajagopala_73@yahoo.com Phone: +91-9343312865 Indian Journal of Advances in Chemical Science Available online at www.ijacskros.com Indian Journal of Advances in Chemical Science S1 (2016) 82-87