Design and Characterization of an Upscaled Dielectric Barrier Discharge-Based Ten-Layer Plasma Source for High-Flow-Rate Gas Treatment  
[PERSON] Laboratory for Future Interdisciplinary Research of Science and Technology, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Yokohama 226-8502, Japan; [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (Y.M. ); liuzhiz  
indoor air pollution. Mechanical ventilation systems are typically used as a relatively cost-effective approach to bringing fresh outdoor air into buildings by diluting indoor air pollutants. Moreover, active elimination devices for indoor air pollutants using either physical, chemical, or biological technologies (e.g., mechanical and electronic filtration, absorption by activated carbons or zeolites, O\({}_{3}\)-mediated reactions by ozonizers, etc.) have also proven to be effective when integrated into ventilation systems. However, the diversity, variability, and low concentrations of indoor air pollutants limit the performance of these technologies, necessitating a versatile option that can address these issues [2]. Non-thermal plasma (NTP) technology, also referred to as cold plasma or non-equilibrium plasma, is considered another promising option for controlling indoor air pollutants and is expected to overcome the limitations resulting from the natural characteristics of such pollutants. Additionally, because NTP technology (e.g., low-temperature atmospheric plasma) can free the plasma generation system of vacuum chambers as well as generate plasma containing abundant reactive species (e.g., in humid air-driven plasma, reactive oxygen species: O, O\({}_{2}\)\({}^{-}\), O\({}_{3}\) and OH, and reactive nitrogen species including NO, NO\({}_{2}\), etc. [3; 4]) at low temperatures (even room temperature), various forms of NTPs have been developed for a multitude of scientific and industrial applications, including disinfection and sterilization [4; 5; 6], medicine [7; 8; 9], chemical analysis [10; 11; 12], thin film deposition [13; 14], waste purification [15; 16; 17], agriculture [18; 19; 20], and surface modification [10; 21; 22]. Among these, dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma is the most promising and suitable plasma source for the abatement of indoor air pollutants owing to its superior characteristics, including its capacity for uniform large-volume plasma generation, simple configuration, lower energy consumption, the effectiveness of multiple pollutant decomposition, bacterial and disinfectant effects, and operation under ambient conditions, as demonstrated in numerous studies [23; 24; 25; 26; 27; 28]. Thus, DBD-based technology is perceived as an excellent potential reinforcement for conventional building ventilation systems installed to handle concentrated indoor air pollutants in buildings such as densely populated workplaces, hospitals, large shopping malls, and so on. However, a low processing capacity (less than a few L/min of gas flow at the lab scale) and lack of knowledge of various characteristics of the DBD plasma at high gas flow rates are the major drawbacks that hinder the practical application of DBD plasma to the abatement and control of indoor air pollutants [29; 30; 31; 28]. Moreover, all the design methodologies and optimizations, such as the treatment of building ventilation air and industrial exhaust, are confined to the laboratory scale and are thus impractical for real-world applications. Therefore, there is a strong demand for large-flow DBD systems, which can treat large volumes of polluted gases. To address this issue, several studies have proposed a stacked DBD configuration (also referred to as multilayer configuration) as an effective scenario for upscaling the planar DBD-based systems to control air pollution [32; 33; 34]. However, none of them have presented a detailed design methodology, and many were combined into a more complex system to realize high performance, which makes them difficult to construct at a low cost.