Description
The development of novel CO2 conversion and utilization technologies represents a cornerstone strategy
in mitigating climate change by reducing atmospheric CO2 concentrations and curbing greenhouse
gas emissions. Transforming CO2 into value-added chemicals not only enables carbon recycling but
also unlocks economic opportunities, contributing to a circular carbon economy. Among the various
conversion pathways, the production of carbon monoxide (CO) is particularly promising. As a key
component of syngas (CO + H2), CO serves as a fundamental building block for synthetic fuels
and a wide range of industrial chemicals. However, conventional syngas production remains heavily
dependent on fossil feedstocks via energy-intensive processes like steam methane reforming, which
perpetuate carbon emissions. In contrast, a sustainable alternative is the plasma-driven conversion of
CO2 into CO using only electricity and CO2 as inputs. Among the emerging technologies, microwave
plasma conversion stands out due to its unique advantages of high CO2 conversion, good energy
efficiency, minimal component degradation and the ability to operate under near-ambient pressure
conditions.
Despite the good performance values this technology is still only used in a lab-scale environment.
To address this, the parallelization of microwave plasma reactors as a means of industrial scale-up
is investigated in this work. The present investigation is specifically aimed at microwave plasma re-
actors for a frequency of 2.45 GHz. A setup of two plasma reactors is put into operation. These
plasma reactors are initially two independent systems. These independent systems serve as baseline
for parallel operation. Then, components which can be merged for synergistic effects are identified
and implemented. These are mainly microwave and exhaust components. Such components are i.e.
the microwave generator, which has its best energy efficiency for maximum output power. Identifica-
tion and investigation of such parts is therefore necessary, so an optimal parallelized system can be
implemented.
The major goals of this investigation are stable microwave operation, proof-of-concept of the par-
allelization and identification of synergistic components.