9530223 Wofford Emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are an increasing environmental concern because they are the major contributors to three of the today's predominant environmental problems: global warming, ozone depletion, and photochemical smog. This Small Business Innovation Research Phase II project proposes the development of an innovative air pollution control device for the destruction and removal of hazardous chemical compounds emanating from industrial semiconductor fabrication processes as well as from other sources of air pollutants such as soil vapor extraction remediation systems. Currently, air pollution control technologies are limited either by cost per pound of pollutant destroyed (thermal oxidation) or by space requirements (catalytic oxidation). The proposed process will very efficiently oxidize hazardous air pollutants to such innocuous by-products as CO2 and H2O along with other easily scrubbed and neutralized compounds such as HCl. These hazardous air pollutants will be oxidized by reaction with oxidative free radicals which are generated by the application of non-thermal microwave plasmas. Non-thermal plasma techniques are a promising strategy for air pollution control and abatement. Phase II will entail the development of a full-scale mobile system to demonstrate the viability of these plasmas for two distinct applications. The first is the development of an air control device for the destruction of thermally stable compounds such as perfluorocompounds emanating from semiconductor etching tools. The second application will involve the destruction and removal of hazardous air pollutants such as benzene and trichloroethene emanating from soil vapor extraction remediation systems. These experiments will provide critical data such as plasma resonance times, reaction by-products, and destruction and removal efficiencies which can be used to design a variety of commercial control systems. Non-thermal plasma application will potentially be a very cost effective, reliable, flexible, low maintenance, and extremely efficient control technology for the removal of hard-to-incinerate gaseous air pollutants emanating from non-combustion sources such as semiconductor etching equipment and for the removal of hazardous air pollutants emanating from other sources such as soil vapor extraction remediations.
