Enhancing CO2 plasma conversion using metal grid catalysts

The synergy between catalysis and plasma chemistry often enhances the yield of chemical reactions in plasma-driven reactors. In the case of CO2 splitting into CO and O2, no positive synergistic effect was observed in earlier studies with plasma reactors, except for dielectric barrier discharges, that do not have a high yield and a high efficiency. Here, we demonstrate that introducing metal meshes into radio frequency-driven plasma reactors increases the relative reaction yield by 20%–50%, while supported metal oxide catalysts in the same setups have no effect. We attribute this to the double role of the metal mesh, which acts both as a catalyst for direct CO2 dissociation as well as for oxygen recombination.

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