Performance of Toluene Removal in a Nonthermal Plasma Catalysis System over Flake-Like HZSM-5 Zeolite with Tunable Pore Size and Evaluation of Its Byproducts

In this study, a series of HZSM-5 catalysts were prepared by the chemical liquid-phase deposition method, and low concentration toluene degradation was carried out in an atmospheric pressure dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) reactor. The catalysts were characterized by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), SEM, TEM, and N(2) adsorption analysis techniques. In addition, several organic contaminants were used to evaluate the adsorption performance of the prepared catalysts, and the effect of pore size on the removal efficiency of toluene and byproduct formation was also investigated. The unmodified HZSM-5 zeolite (Z0) exhibited good performance in toluene removal and CO(2) selectivity due to the diffusion resistance of ozone and the amounts of active species (OH• and O•). Meanwhile, the time of flight mass spectrometry (TOF-MS) result showed that there were more byproducts of the benzene ring in the gas phase under the action of small micropore size catalysts. Moreover, the surface byproducts were detected by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS).