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

尽管人们普遍认为工业革命对社会有益，但过去两个世纪的工业革命也导致了我们日常环境的逐渐恶化。当今使用的许多制造过程会产生大量温室气体(GHG)排放，并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施加更严格的限制，显然必须开发更具能源效益的技术，在排放前对工艺液体进行清洁，或至少将污染物减少到可接受的最低水平，以便我们的工业能够继续保持清洁，同时保持其经济竞争力。化学工程和生物技术工程部正在进行的等离子体处理工作中出现了一种这样的有前途的技术。在舍布鲁克大学。等离子体是材料的一种物理状态，在极高的温度(超过4000摄氏度)下，普通物质在蒸发时被转化为电子、离子和中性粒子的混合物，因此通常被称为“热等离子体”。热等离子体可以通过气体电离产生，在“供电的”电极之间或通过适当功率的线圈通过电磁场感应来产生。与传统方法相比，这种能量密集型工艺技术的优势包括提高能源利用效率，显著减少温室气体排放，以及更好地控制紧凑型反应器中执行的系统化学。然而，在这些新的热等离子体技术被引入并投入商业使用之前，必须充分了解等离子体与过程液之间观察到的反应的潜在机理。在这项为期五年的研究中，我们建议研究不同的反应系统，以了解等离子体与不同替代液相互作用的基本原理和影响这些相互作用的参数，以及等离子体反应器本身的发展。

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".Thermal plasma can be most conveniently generated by gaseous ionisation, either between "powered" electrodes or by electro- magnetic field induction, by means of suitably powered coils. Advantages of such energy intensive process technology over conventional methods include increased energy use efficiency, significant reductions in GHG emissions and better control of the system chemistry performed in compact reactors.However, before these new thermal plasma technologies can be introduced and brought to commercial scale use, the underlying mechanisms of the reactions, observed between the plasma and process liquors, must be sufficiently understood In this five year study, we propose to investigate different reactive systems in order to understand fundamentals of the plasma's interaction with different surrogate liquors and the parameters that affect these interactions, and development of the plasma reactor itself.