ORIGINAL PAPER Non-Thermal Plasma Assisted Regeneration of Acetone Adsorbed TiO 2 Surface L. Sivachandiran • F. Thevenet • A. Rousseau Received: 8 February 2013 / Accepted: 7 June 2013 Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013 Abstract Improvement of indoor air quality regarding volatile organic compounds (VOCs) requires the development of innovative oxidation processes. This paper investi- gates the coupling of a metal oxide sorbent with non-thermal plasma (NTP) in an espe- cially designed reactor. TiO 2 was selected as model sorbent and acetone was used as model VOC. The analyses of gas phase species at the reactor downstream have been performed using FTIR spectroscopy. In a first step, acetone adsorption on TiO 2 surface under dry air was characterized in terms of total amount adsorbed, as well as reversibly and irreversibly adsorbed fractions. Obtained results were compared and discussed with literature in terms of acetone reactive adsorption on TiO 2 surface. Mesityloxide was proposed as the major compound in the irreversibly adsorbed fraction. In a second time, acetone saturated TiO 2 surface was exposed to NTP surface discharge. Irrespectively of the injected power, \ 30 % of the initially adsorbed acetone has been recovered as CO, CO 2 and desorbed acetone. Finally, thermal desorptions have been performed. They evidenced that (1) NTP treatment modifies the nature of the adsorbed organic species, (2) mineralization rate is considerably improved. Based on desorbed species temporal profile analysis, carboxylates and more especially formates are suggested as major adsorbed species after NTP treatment (P inj [ 0.2 W). This hypothesis has been evaluated and confirmed. This paper finally evidenced that NTP can be used as an efficient pretreatment technique to promote the mineralization of adsorbed acetone for further thermal treatment. Keywords Adsorption  Non-thermal plasma  Acetone  Surface regeneration L. Sivachandiran  F. Thevenet Universite ´ Lille Nord-de-France, 59000 Lille, France L. Sivachandiran  F. Thevenet (&) Mines Douai, CE, 59508 Douai, France e-mail: frederic.thevenet@mines-douai.fr L. Sivachandiran  A. Rousseau Laboratoire de Physique des Plasmas, Ecole Polytechnique, UPMC, Universite ´ Paris Sud 11, CNRS, Palaiseau, France 123 Plasma Chem Plasma Process DOI 10.1007/s11090-013-9463-7