Characteristics of the dielectric barrier corona discharges

In this paper, the electrical characteristics of both the dielectric barrier corona discharge and the usual ac corona discharge have been studied in parallel with the ozone generation under the same operating conditions. Therefore, the corona discharges were formed inside two identical reactors in the form of a coaxial wire-to-cylinder with and without a dielectric barrier covering the inner surface of the cylinder. The two reactors have been fed by constant flow rates from the dry air and the oxygen gas independently at the atmospheric pressure and the room temperature, in parallel with applying a sinusoidal ac voltage to the electrodes of the reactors. The electric power consumed in forming the corona discharges and the waveform of the discharge current as well as the ozone concentration generated in the flowing gases through the reactors have been studied versus the peak of the ac voltage that was applied to the reactors. The current-voltage oscillograms showed that the sequence of the dielectric barrier corona discharge modes in both the dry air and the oxygen gas is the same as the sequence of the usual ac corona discharge modes in the same gases. With the increase of the peak value of the ac voltage applied to the dielectric barrier corona discharge reactor, the peak of the discharge current increases linearly while the value of the electric charge accumulated on the surface of the dielectric barrier increases in the form of a power function. The ozone concentration generated by the dielectric barrier corona discharges is approximately equal to the ozone concentration generated by the usual ac corona discharges in both the dry air and the oxygen gas under the same operating conditions.