Ozone generation by pulsed corona discharge in a wire cylinder arrangement

In general, the aim in an ozone generator is to produce intense corona discharges without inducing full breakdown between the electrodes, The dielectric barrier in the conventional set up inhibits such breakdown. There are other possibilities, however. If the electric field is made highly nonuniform, as in a point/plane or wire/cylinder arrangement, for example, then the low field region close to the plane or cylinder essentially acts, for times less than the crossing times for charged particles, as a charge collector in much the same way as the dielectric barrier. If a generator could be devised on this basis, it would contain no fragile dielectric and, as such, would be intrinsically more reliable. The project to which this paper relates aims, amongst other things, to explore the factors controlling the ozone generation rate in a wire/cylinder geometry. The authors describe the experiments conducted and their results