ORGANIC SYNTHESIS WITH CONTINUOUS FLOW WATER FILM PULSED PLASMA
DISCHARGE
Robert J. Wandell, Kevin Hsieh, and Bruce R. Locke
Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Florida State University, 2525 Pottsdamer Street
Tallahassee, FL 32310 USA
Stefan Bresch and Igor V. Alabugin
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry,
Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306 USA
Plasma discharges generated by moderate frequency, low energy pulses in a flowing carrier gas with
liquid water have been shown capable of producing hydrogen peroxide at moderately high energy yields.
The leading hypothesis for the success of this production method is that free elections produced by the
plasma in the gas phase dissociate vaporized water molecules into hydroxyl radicals and hydrogen. The
hydroxyl radicals rapidly react to form hydrogen peroxide, which is sequestered into the liquid phase.
Many reactor designs have been explored with various gas-liquid contact schemes in order to enhance
the overall efficiency of this process. Recently, a continuously flowing, liquid film, pulsed plasma
reactor has been developed in our laboratory which has a number of significant benefits over the
previously explored configurations. Using this novel reactor configuration in conjunction with
inspiration and techniques developed from work with pure water, the main objective of our current
research is to explore the synthesis of organic compounds with soft oxidation by hydroxyl radicle attack.
To do so, small amounts of organic solvent are vaporized into the plasma where they undergo electron
attack and oxidation by hydroxyl radicals formed from water to generate more useful chemical species.
Results with n-hexane