Thermal Plasma for Treating Process Liquors / Plasma thermique pour le traitement des liqueurs de procédés

尽管过去两个世纪的工业革命被认为是对整个社会的福音，但它也导致了我们日常环境的逐渐恶化。目前使用的许多制造过程产生大量温室气体（GHG）排放，需要大量的能源投入。随着监管机构继续立法，对排放到我们环境中的温室气体水平进行更严格的限制，很明显，必须开发更节能的技术，在排放前对加工液进行清洁，或者至少将污染物减少到可接受的最低水平，这样我们的工业才能继续保持清洁，同时保持其经济竞争力。舍布鲁克大学化学工程和生物技术工程系正在进行的等离子体处理工作中出现了一种这样有前途的技术。等离子体是一种物质的物理状态，普通物质在暴露于非常高的温度（超过4000 °C）下，在汽化时转化为电子、离子和中性粒子的混合物，因此通常使用的名称是“热等离子体”。

Although considered to be a boon to society in general, the industrial revolution of the past 2 centuries has also resulted in the gradual deterioration of our everyday environment. Many of the manufacturing processes in use today produce large emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) and require large energy inputs. As regulatory bodies continue to legislate for more stringent limits on the levels of GHG released into our environment, it is clear that more energy efficient technologies must be developed to clean process liquors before discharge or at least reduce the contaminants to acceptable minimum levels so that our industries can continue to be clean, yet maintain their economic competitiveness. One such promising technology has emerged from the ongoing plasma processing work of the Chemical Engineering and Biotechnological Engineering Dept. at the Université de Sherbrooke. Plasma is a physical state of materials whereby ordinary matter is converted, on vaporisation, to a mixture of electrons, ions and neutral particles on exposure to very high temperatures (in excess of 4000 °C), hence the generally used name, "thermal plasma".