Reduction of NOx and PM in marine diesel engine exhaust gas using microwave plasma

Abatement of NOx and particulate matters (PM) of marine diesel exhaust gas using microwave (MW) non-thermal plasma is presented in this paper. NOx mainly consist of NO and less concentration of NO₂ in a typical two stoke marine diesel engine and microwave plasma generation can completely remove NO. MW was generated using two 2kW microwave sources and a saw tooth passive electrode. Passive electrode was used to generate high electric field region within microwave environment where high energetic electrons (1-3eV) are produced for the generation of non-thermal plasma (NTP). 2kW gen-set diesel exhaust gas was used to test our pilot-scale MW plasma reactor. The experimental results show that almost 100% removal of NO is possible for the exhaust gas flow rate of 60l/s. It was also shown that MW can significantly remove soot particles (PM, 10nm to 365nm) entrained in the exhaust gas of 200kW marine diesel engine with 40% engine load and gas flow rate of 130l/s. MW without generating plasma showed reduction up to 50% reduction of PM and with the plasma up to 90% reduction. The major challenge in these experiments was that igniting the desired plasma and sustaining it with passive electrodes for longer period (10s of minutes) as it required fine tuning of electrode position, which was influenced by many factors such as gas flow rate, geometry of reactor and MW power.