Present study reports the application of non-thermal plasma approach for the partial oxidation of methane to methanol. The target was achieved by employing oxygen under ambient condition in a dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) reactor, which was later operated as a packed bed DBD. A variety of packing materials of different nature (Al2O3, TiO2, CeO2 and glass beads) are tested and corresponding reaction pathways also have been shown. In addition, the influence of the feed gas composition, total flow rate and specific input energy has been investigated. Formation of CH3OH, H2, CO, CO2, C2H6, and HCHO has been identified. Typical results indicated that the plasma reactor operating under a packed bed configuration showed better performance than the reactor without packing. Among the packing materials used, glass beads packing provided the best selectivity of ~35% to methanol, whereas, it was around 25% with DBD reactor without packing. In a similar manner, the yield of methanol increased to 5.4% with glass beads packing against 1.7% with DBD reactor with no packing. The good performance with glass beads packing is due to the uniform distribution of the microdischarges and improved filed strength.

中文翻译：

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非热等离子体辅助甲烷单步转化为甲醇

目前的研究报告了非热等离子体方法在甲烷部分氧化成甲醇中的应用。该目标是通过在环境条件下在介质阻挡放电 (DBD) 反应器中使用氧气来实现的，该反应器后来作为填充床 DBD 运行。测试了各种不同性质的填料（Al2O3、TiO2、CeO2 和玻璃珠），并显示了相应的反应途径。此外，还研究了原料气组成、总流速和比输入能量的影响。已确定形成 CH3OH、H2、CO、CO2、C2H6 和 HCHO。典型的结果表明，在填充床配置下运行的等离子体反应器比没有填充的反应器表现出更好的性能。在使用的包装材料中，玻璃珠填料对甲醇的选择性最佳，约为 35%，而 DBD 反应器没有填料时，选择性约为 25%。以类似的方式，使用玻璃珠填料的甲醇产率增加到 5.4%，而使用无填料的 DBD 反应器则为 1.7%。玻璃珠填料的良好性能是由于微放电的均匀分布和改进的场强。