Characteristics of ozonizer using pulsed power

Recently industrial applications of ozone have increased in widely different areas including oxidation, sterilization, deodorization, bleaching and others. Ozone generation has been attained using ultra violet irradiation, electrolysis and electrical discharges. The electrical discharge technique includes silent discharge, surface discharge, pulse corona discharge and superimposed silent and surface discharges. In this study, high concentration ozone was produced by using a pulsed streamer discharge under atmospheric pressure of oxygen. A magnetic pulse compressor (MPC) which has a maximum output voltage of 60 kV, a maximum pulse repetition rate of 500 pulses per second (pps) and a pulse duration of about 130 ns was used as a pulsed power source. A spiral copper wire (1 mm in diameter, 10 mm pitch) wound on PVC tubes (26 mm and 30 mm in outside diameters) formed the central electrode in a coaxial geometry. A copper cylinder of 60 mm in internal diameter formed the outer electrode. The ozone production characteristics of three reactors having different dimensions of the gap spacing (15 mm, and 17 mm) and length (500 mm and 1000 mm) were investigated. An oxygen flow rate in the range of 1 to 3 l/min at atmospheric pressure was used. It has been found that the dependence of ozone concentration on energy density (J/l) was almost the same for the three different reactors. Typically a production yield of ozone of 100 g/kWh at 30 g/m/sup 3/ was attained.