High power pulsed streamer corona reactor using a coaxial discharge tube for gas treatment applications

We report on our investigations of a pulsed high power streamer corona reader using a simple coaxial discharge tube for industrial gas treatment processes, such as ozone generation and flue gas cleanup. For industrial usages of these processes, higher discharge power density is favorable to achieve higher productivity. As a first step of research aiming at the higher discharge power density, we examined experimentally characteristics of the repetitive pulsed streamer corona discharge using dry air as feed gas. As a result, the dependency that the discharge current decreases with repetition rate and increases with gas flow rate has been found. The maximum discharge power density of about 100 W/l (/spl sim/25 kV, /spl sim/75 A, /spl sim/100 ns, 170 pps, 0.3l) was obtained in this experiment. The gas temperature rise at this condition was about 20/spl sim/25 %. Because it is not so high as to affect gas treatment badly, it will be possible to operate at still higher discharge power density. We also measured generated ozone in this experiment and the lowest ozone energy cost obtained was 9/spl sim/10 Wh/gO/sub 3/, which was lower than that of a commercial silent discharge type ozonizer.