Direct Oxidation of Methane to Methanol Over Cu-Based Catalyst in an AC Dielectric Barrier Discharge

In this paper, the conversion of methane to methanol on CuO/Al₂O₃ and Mo–CuO/Al₂O₃ catalysts in a plasma reactor was tested. A comparison between catalytic and plasma-catalytic systems had been made in tested temperature range of 50–300°C. Experimental results showed that plasma-catalytic system demonstrated a much better methane conversion than catalytic system in tested temperature range and Mo–CuO/Al₂O₃ revealed a higher catalytic activity than CuO/Al₂O₃ for methanol synthesis. Furthermore, an Arrhenius plot was made in order to deduce the mechanism of plasma activation, which revealed that the presence of plasma decreased the activation energy for both catalysts. In the case of Mo-CuO/Al₂O₃ catalyst, the enhanced activity for methanol synthesis was assumed due to the oxygen vacancies on Mo–CuO/Al₂O₃ catalyst, which can utilize plasma-induced species to improve the catalytic efficiency.