Weibull Statistical Analysis of Pulsed Breakdown Voltages in High-Pressure Carbon Dioxide Including Supercritical Phase

Pulsed discharge plasma in supercritical fluids (SCFs) has attracted a great deal of attention in the field of plasma application for chemical processing. Characteristics of electrical breakdown are one of the important concerns for dielectric reliability of a plasma reactor with SCFs. In this paper, the pulsed breakdown voltages of quasi-uniform gaps were measured by changing the CO₂ medium from gas to supercritical phase at a given temperature, and Weibull statistical analysis was applied to the measured breakdown voltages. The area effect on breakdown voltage, which is known to give an equivalent effective constant to Weibull shape parameter m, was examined with three sphere-to-sphere gaps. The experimental results indicate that the dispersion in the pulsed breakdown voltage in pressurized carbon dioxide obeys Weibull distribution, and the Weibull shape parameter m depends on the state of the CO₂ medium. The dependence of m on the medium density that was obtained from direct analysis of breakdown voltages for a given electrode system indicated a similar tendency to that of the effective constant by area effect analysis.