Economic Assessment of Proposed Electric-Discharge Non-Thermal Plasma Field-Pilot Demonstration Units for NOx Removal in Jet-Engine Exhaust: White Paper for SERDP Project CP-1038

摘要

This project is currently evaluating non-thermal plasma (NTP) technologies for treating jet-engine exhaust arising from DoD test facilities. In the past, some economic analyses for NTP de-NOx have shown that it is not economical, compared to other techniques. The main reasons for this conclusion was that the previous analyses examined stand-alone, or less mature electrical- discharge reactors, or electron-beam based systems that incorporated both chemical additives and quite expensive (both in terms of capital and maintenance costs) electron accelerators. Also, in contrast to more recent developments, both the discharge and electron-beam techniques of the past did not extensively incorporate methods to increase the yields (energy efficiency) of active NOx- decomposing species. In an earlier White Paper and a Project Report, we have analyzed the costs of more mature NTP systems incorporating chemical additives and new-concept NTP technologies (namely, hybrid systems) jet-engine emissions control and have shown lower exhaust-gas treatment costs for NTP systems compared to baseline standard de-NOx technologies like Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) combined with a wet scrubber or SCR combined with an electrostatic precipitator (ESP). In this paper, we will examine our most- promising candidate NTP reactor systems for a field-pilot demonstration on jet- engine exhaust and discuss the economic analyses for these hybrid units, which show that the economics of the proposed candidate systems are more favorable than earlier NTP reactor economic-assessment conclusions for NOx removal.