The influences of inlet gas flow rate and reactor configuration on volatile organic compounds (VOCs) decomposition efficiency in a traditional gliding arc (T-GA) facility are studied based on laboratory experiments and numerical simulation. The ratio of the nozzle diameter and the shortest distance of two electrodes should be maintained in a suitable value range to guarantee the decomposition efficiency, which indicates simply enlarging the nozzle inner diameter is not a proper way to raise the T-GA treatment capacity in a fixed supply voltage condition. A developed gliding arc gas discharge (D-GA) reactor based on a modified gas feed system is proposed: small flow rate air goes through the bottom nozzle to process the GA evolution, and high flow rate contaminated gas goes frontal through the plasma region and decomposes. The performances of D-GA reactor in the decomposition of VOCs with relative high gas flow rate, including decomposition efficiency and specific energy consumption, are better than T-GA reactor. D-GA reactor also avoids the drawbacks of the increases of power system amount and electric power consumption in multi-electrode GA system. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.