CONFERENCE SUPPORT FOR THE 4TH INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON NON THERMAL PLASMA (May 10-14, 2004)

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The 4th International Symposium on Non-thermal Plasma Technologies for PollutionControl and Sustainable Energy Development will be held in Panama City Beach, Florida, May 10-14, 2004. It is devoted to advancing the field of non-thermal plasma processes for environmental protection, including applications to air and water treatment and to sustainable energy processing. This meeting is intended to assemble experts from all over the world to present recent advances to the field and to discuss the prospects of these technologies for future development and study. The objectives of this meeting are therefore:1) to assemble key research groups working on the environmental applications of non-thermalplasma including air and water treatment and sustainable energy processing,2) to provide a stimulating environment to foster scientific exchange and discussion of the mostimportant current issues related to the development of this area of technology, and3) to conduct extensive discussions on the directions for future work and development.This award provides supplemental funding to support this conference through some travel and publication costs. This conference can lead to broader impacts as follows. The conference will enhance and promote collaboration among scientists and engineers from large variety of disciplines and from a wide range of nations. It will engage a number of graduate students, and particularly women and under-represented minorities in order to develop the next generation of researchers. The intellectual merit of the conference is reflected in the high quality of the participating researchers representing major laboratories from top institutions worldwide. It will provide useful input to NSF as a guide to grant investments in this evolving field.A non-thermal plasma is a plasma, or collection of free and randomly moving ions, that ischaracterized by low background temperature, or energy, in combination with highly energeticelectrons. Typically, non-thermal plasma can be produced using a wide variety of high voltageelectrical discharges (e.g., AC, DC, and pulsed) as well as with electron beams. The largestcommercial application of non-thermal plasma in the environmental field is the use of ACdielectric barrier discharge reactors for producing ozone, generally, subsequently used in watertreatment. Other commercial applications of non-thermal plasma include flue gas treatment frompower plants and incinerators and indoor air cleaning. Over the last 15 years there has beenconsiderable interest and research devoted to testing, evaluating, and developing non-thermalplasmas for other applications. These other applications include treatment of volatile andhazardous organic compounds in gases, treatment of nitrogen oxides and particulate matter fromthe exhaust of mobile sources, treatment of organic, inorganic, and biological matter incontaminated water, synthetic chemical processes, and destruction of hazardous chemical andbiological agents. While the technology for ozone generation is fairly mature, developments forother applications are intensively under investigation due to the high sensitivity of reactorperformance on the reactor design and operating conditions (e.g., gas and/or liquid composition,nature of applied electric field, addition of catalysts, and other factors). Recent developments inthe fields of plasma-catalysis, gas-liquid discharge phenomena, and hydrocarbon reforming fromnatural gas are particularly promising and can contribute to the development of useful and efficient technologies.