Thermal tar cracking enhanced by cold plasma – A study of naphthalene as tar surrogate

Abstract Gasification has been proposed as a good solution for recovering energy from waste and biomass in the form of syngas. However, the presence of tar limits syngas applications. Tar model molecules have been removed by cold plasmas up to 400  ° C, but to avoid syngas cooling tar removal above 600  ° C is required. To investigate tar removal by cold plasma at higher temperatures, two sets of experiments were done, one to identify tar composition from MSW gasification, and a second one to crack in a nanosecond-pulsed corona plasma at high temperatures the most refractory tar compound found, naphthalene. In this paper, we report the first results of cold plasma for tar cracking at temperatures up to 1100  ° C, revealing that this tandem can remove naphthalene completely at 800  ° C, compared to the 1000  ° C needed in case of thermal cracking alone. The synergy between plasma and thermal cracking is driven by higher energy densities when temperatures increase. However, this synergy stops when thermal cracking reactions predominate.