Dr. Tony Murphy

Chief Research Scientist, CSIRO, Manufacturing

“CO2 conversion using plasma catalysis – prospects for scale-up”

Tony has been with CSIRO, Australia’s main government research organisation, since 1989. Before this, he received a PhD from the University of Sydney and was a postdoctoral researcher at Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics. He works on plasma applications, including plasma catalysis and hydrogen plasma ironmaking. He has published over 350 refereed journal papers with a Web of Science h-index of 60, and has received several awards for his research, most recently the 2024 Plasma Physics Innovation Prize of the European Physical Society. He holds editorial positions with five international journals, including Editor-in-Chief of Plasma Chemistry and Plasma Processing.

Plasma-assisted catalysis is being investigated for gas conversion processes including ammonia production, CO2 hydrogenation and dry reforming of methane. CO2 methanation (CO2 + 4H2 → CH4 + 2H2O), for example, shows significant potential for producing green methane from biogas. Bench-scale experiments in packed-bed dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) reactors give methane yield, selectivity and energy efficiency that are competitive with those of the thermal catalytic process while operating at a much lower temperature. However, the scale-up of packed-bed DBD reactors is problematic for several reasons, including the significant pressure drop across the reactor. In this talk, I will present the latest results from bench-scale experiments and discuss the requirements for scale-up, which include novel reactor designs.