Paper PS2-TuM6
Industrial Scale Pulsed Atmospheric Dielectric Barrier Discharges

Tuesday, November 10, 2009, 9:40 am, Room B2

Atmospheric dielectric barrier plasma glow-like discharges over 1 meter in length and 500 square centimeters in area have been generated in air with a custom high voltage driving source. Pulse peak currents well in excess of 1 kiloampere at atmospheric pressure with total charge transfer up to 90 microcoulombs have been repeatedly generated in homogeneous discharges at frequencies up to 100 hertz. A rapid voltage rise time at 20-30kV is readily achieved by the source and is sufficient to produce a voltage across the electrodes in excess of the DC breakdown voltage prior to the onset of breakdown. The overvoltage condition plays an important role in determining the uniformity of the plasma discharge. Electrical modeling of the discharge characteristics show the resistivity of the plasma to change over the course of an individual pulse causing the discharge characteristics to switch from an oscillatory state to a critically damped state. Charge transfer and power densities in dielectric barrier discharges are limited by the electrode size and the intrinsic material properties of the dielectric used to distribute the space charge. It will be shown that the charge transfer of each pulse scales proportionally with the size of the electrodes for a given dielectric as should be expected for a complete homogeneous discharge. This paper will emphasize the correlation between overvoltage conditions, dielectric material properties, and electrode size to the electrical charge transfer of the glow-like discharge. The impact of the charge transfer scaling behavior on the scaling of other critical parameters like current density will also be discussed.