My name is Marzia and I am from the sunny city of Cagliari, Italy. I have lived there until 2016, when I graduated in my Bachelor Course in Physics. Then, I decided to move to Turin to continue my studies and deepen my knowledge in the physics of matter. I strongly believe that one of the main goals of scientific research should be to face the immediate problems of our society, as nowadays are the urge of sustainability and the emergency of climate change. Therefore, from the very beginning my greatest aspiration has been to do research in those fields, which led me to deepen my knowledge on renewable energy, molecular and solid state physics and, eventually, to do my Master’s thesis at the Italian Institute of Technology on nanostructured materials for the catalysis of carbon dioxide.
Currently I’m a Ph.D. student at AGH University in Krakow, as part of the European MSCA PIONEER program. My goal is to find a new catalyst for reforming processes that are coupled with plasma, in the frame of plasma-assisted carbon dioxide recycling. This means that we will treat flue gases that contain the most pollutant greenhouse gases, such as methane and carbon dioxide, in order to remove them from the environment and convert them into more valuable chemicals, with the aid of plasma. Taking part in this ambitious project gives me the opportunity to take action myself for a cause that I hold dear and to embrace it fully, with all of my commitment.
| Overview |  |
| ESR: | 7 |
| Title: | Plasma-catalytic coupling in a ns pulsed discharge for the DRM reaction |
| Home Institution: | AGH University of Science and Technology (AGH-UST) |
| 1st Supervisor: | Monika Motak |
| Host Institution: | University of Trento (UNITN) |
| 2nd Supervisor: | Paolo Tosi |
| Industrial Partner: | ITRE |
| Industrial Contact: | Monica Secco |
| Defence: | September 8 2025 |
Abstract
Methane emissions have increased in the past decades from agriculture, waste and fossil fuel sectors. Due to methane’s high global warming potential, reducing its atmospheric emissions is crucial alongside carbon dioxide reductions. The Dry Reforming of Methane (DRM) reaction converts equal moles of CH4 and CO2 into syngas, a value-added gas mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. With an H2/CO ratio close to 1, DRM is ideal for producing synthetic liquid hydrocarbons through the Fischer-Tropsch reaction. Despite its advantages, DRM struggles to become a mature industrial technology. The high activation
temperatures required (above 700°C) and its endothermic nature result in low energy efficiency. High operation temperatures are also responsible for catalyst deactivation, as a consequence of sintering and/or coking [1].
A parallel strategy to reduce carbon emissions involves replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy sources. This effort is hampered by technological challenges, notably the irregular and intermittent nature of renewable sources, demanding efficient energy storage and grid stabilisation. Non-thermal plasmas (NTP) can address these issues by converting excess electrical energy from renewables to chemical energy stored in value-added products. Plasmas can respond to energy variability, as they can be quickly switched on and off. Since NTPs work out from thermal equilibrium, the kinetic energy of electrons can be much higher than that of more massive particles. Hence, thermodinamically unfavoured reactions as DRM are allowed, while the gas temperature remains virtually close to room temperature [2]. DRM experiments in plasma show higher energy efficiency compared to thermal ones, but lower conversion and
lower selectivity toward syngas [3].
The combination of plasma and catalysis has shown synergistic effects that overcome the short-comings of both techniques. However, a fundamental understanding of the processes taking place and of the mutual interactions between plasma and catalyst are still missing. The majority of the studies are done with dielectric barrier discharge plasmas (DBD), as they allow catalyst placement directly inside the plasma reaction area. Nevertheless, more efficient plasma sources should be explored, such as gliding arc, microwave and nanosecond repetitively pulsed discharges (NRP), where the coupling with a catalyst is not trivial and poses a whole new challenge.
In our experiments, we study the combination of a NRP discharge with Ni-based catalysts. The catalysts are chosen based on their success in the corresponding thermal reaction [4, 5]. The plasma discharge, previously characterised in the DRM reaction in the works of Scapinello and Montesano [6, 7], is a pin-to-pin discharge operated at atmospheric pressure. NRP discharge plasma is gaining growing attention as one of the most energy-efficient methods to promote chemical reactions, by taking advantage of the high electron densities and electron energies that can be reached. It consists in the repetition, with frequencies in the kHz domain, of very short, high-voltage pulses, established between two electrodes. The pulse duration is generally about 4-10 ns, with a voltage amplitude of tens of kV and a distance between the electrodes of a few millimetres. As a consequence, the gas temperature can easily rise to above 4000 K [8], which makes the application of catalysts possible only in post-plasma catalysis mode.
[1] Abdullah et al., Journal of Cleaner Production, vol. 162, pp. 170–185, Sept. 2017
[2] Bogaerts & Neyts, ACS Energy Letters, vol. 3, pp. 1013–1027, Apr. 2018
[3] Snoeckx & Bogaerts, Chemical Society Reviews, vol. 46, pp. 5805–5863, Oct. 2017
[4] Whitehead, Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics, vol. 49, p. 243001, May 2016
[5] Debek et al., Catalysis Science & Technology, vol. 6, pp. 6705–6715, Aug. 2016
[6] Scapinello et al., Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics, vol. 49, p. 075602, Jan. 2016
[7] Montesano et al., Journal of CO2 Utilization, vol. 49, p. 101556, July 2021
[8] Martini et al., Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion, vol. 60, p. 014016, Oct. 2017
Links with other ESR
- ESR 1, 2 and 13: Influence of new catalysts for tri-reforming on plasma development
- ESRs 6, 8-10: Comparison of efficiency
Expected Results
- Preparation of novel catalyst/s for reforming processes
- Tailoring of the catalyst structure, allowing increased activity, selectivity and stability
- Selection of the conditions of catalytic (plasma-assisted) reaction
- Determination of the influence of flue gas poisons on the catalysts performance
- Insight into the reaction mechanisms
Secondments
- UNITN: Use the catalysts produced in combination with plasma sources
- ITRE: Taking into account real requirement of energy cost of industrial installations