A compact high-power pulsed corona source for treatment of pollutants in heterogeneous media

This paper reports the ongoing effort on development of efficient, compact pulsed corona sources for pollution control applications 1. The system comprises an all-solid state 2-kW average power (it can be doubled without change of size), compact (<130 kg) nanosecond pulser and a plasma reactor. The pulser makes use of magnetic compression techniques. One compression stage suffices for the forming of 60 kV, 100 ns, 3 J pulses across a reactor having an impedance of approximately 100 Ω, at a PRF of up to 500 Hz; the risetime is 15 ns. The plasma reactor implemented as a checker mesh of wire electrodes handles both gases' and liquids' streams. In the case of gas, gas stream is seeded by atomized water; polluted liquids are fed in atomized state. In both cases, the treatment is conducted in heterogeneous media. Mechanical and electrical designs are detailed. Typical voltage and current waveforms, both with equivalent and corona load, volt-ampere characteristics, corona discharge appearance, etc., are presented. At operation on a resistive and corona loads, the compressor efficiency was found to be approximately 82% and 62%, respectively.