This work describes plasma destruction of SF6 in a zirconia (ZrO2) packed bed plasma reactor (PBR). Electric signals, equivalent parameters, emission spectra and degradation results have been utilized toevaluate the influence of ZrO2 size on PBR discharge characteristics and SF6 degradation. The resultspresent that the size of ZrO2 has a significant impact on PBR discharge characteristics due to its influenceon physical parameters. Moreover, bigger ZrO2 beads packing shows a better performance in SF6degradation because of longer gas residence time. In addition, the key operating parameters includingflowrate, SF6 concentration, oxygen concentration, and water vapor concentration were optimized byresponse surface methodology (RSM) with Box-Behnken design (BBD). The proposed optimization modelshows satisfactory correlation between the predicted and actual results. For energy yield (EY), the mutualeffect offlowrate, SF6 concentration and water vapor concentration was significant. For SO2F2 selectivity,the mutual effect of SF6 concentration and water vapor concentration was significant. The optimum SF6abatement was predicted from RSM as 14.64 g/kWh and 14.42% for EY and SO2F2 selectivity atflowrate of200 mL/min, SF6 concentration of 3%, oxygen concentration of 0.83% and water vapor concentration of1.89%.