About Advances in Plasmas for a Sustainable Future
Welcome to Advances in Plasmas for a Sustainable Future. This is a special collection of research articles, review papers, and special issues, published in Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics on the exciting field of plasma for environmental and energy applications.
Topic Editors
Annemie Bogaerts is full professor of physical chemistry at the University of Antwerp. She is head of the research group PLASMANT, with research activities on modelling of plasma chemistry, plasma reactor design, and plasma-surface interactions, as well as plasma experiments for various applications, with major emphasis on environmental, energy and medical applications.
Xin Tu is a Reader in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Electronic at the University of Liverpool. He has been working on interdisciplinary research at the interface of plasma science and chemical engineering directed towards environmental and energy applications. Significant efforts have been devoted to plasma-catalysis for gas cleaning and the synthesis of fuels and chemicals from a range of carbon sources.
Plasmas are finding increasing interest for various environmental and energy applications. A major field of interest is gas conversion (including CO2, CH4, N2) into value-added chemicals and renewable fuels. Indeed, these stable molecules require significant energy to be converted by classical (thermal) processes, but plasma allows them to be selectively activated by the electrons and reactive species, so that their conversion can be realized at mild reaction conditions of pressure and temperature. Moreover, as plasma is generated by electric energy, and is easily switched on/off, it is very suitable to be combined with renewable energy, in view of the intermittent character of solar and wind energy, i.e., for peak shaving and grid stabilization, by storing the renewable electricity into fuels and chemicals. However, despite the promising results obtained already, much more research is needed to improve the conversion, energy efficiency and selectivity into value-added products.
For the latter purpose, plasma must be combined with a catalyst, in so-called plasma catalysis, which is not only important for gas conversion, but also for other environmental applications, like air pollution control, volatile organic compound (VOC) remediation, etc. However, the underlying mechanisms of plasma catalysis are far from understood, so more research is needed to reveal these mechanisms and to design catalysts tailored to the plasma environment.
Furthermore, plasma also appears very suitable for catalyst preparation at low temperatures, resulting in different types of nucleation and crystal growth compared to conventional thermal methods. This allows the production of catalysts with smaller particle sizes and controlled structure, which can enhance their activity and stability. In addition, plasma can be used for reduction, oxidation, doping, etching, coating, alloy formation, and surface treatment of catalysts.
Finally, because protection of the environment and natural resources are also requirements for sustainable agriculture, the Advances in Plasmas for a Sustainable Future programme also includes research on agriculture, food and water treatment, plasma treatment of seeds, plasma-enhanced plant growth, as well as the production of fertilizers by nitrogen fixation, making the link with the first topic mentioned above on plasma-based gas conversion.
The Advances in Plasmas for a Sustainable Future programme aims at highlighting the recent achievements, as well as remaining limitations and corresponding possible solutions in all of the above application fields.
This page will be regularly updated with the latest work published in JPhysD, as part of this programme. We hope you will enjoy reading it!
Annemie Bogaerts and Xin Tu, Topic Editors
Scope
- Plasma-based synthesis of value-added chemicals and fuels, including CO2 conversion, N2 fixation, CH4 activation, alcohol/hydrocarbon conversion, etc.
- Air pollution control
- Plasma catalysis for environmental and energy applications
- Plasma for the synthesis of energy materials and catalysts
- Plasma-based agriculture, food and water treatment