Review of Nonthermal Plasma-Based Water Treatment: Prerequisites, Procedures, and Potency

The advanced water treatment technologies that help reuse wastewater are gaining attention worldwide. The nonthermal plasma-based water treatment (NTPWT) approach possesses many advantages over conventional technologies. This process allows either complex organic molecules to be fully mineralized into carbon dioxide and water or reduced to simpler and less toxic chemicals. However, NTPWT reactors face various technical challenges in their successful implementation as experiments need to be conducted with variations in diverse operating parameters to understand the treatment capability. Researchers from different backgrounds, physics, chemistry, electrical, and chemical engineering, have been working to understand various aspects of water treatment with different objectives. This review analyzes studies on the NTPWT. Key experimental studies have been reviewed to explore requisites for NTPWT, such as high-voltage (HV) sources, different discharge procedures, and their efficiencies based on the result analysis. This review is expected to be helpful to budding researchers in this area.