Optimizing energy efficiency of pulsed corona gas cleaning technique: matching the reactor to a pulse source

A promising technique for gas cleaning is based on non-thermal plasma induced chemical reactions. A well-known way to generate non-thermal plasmas is by using a pulsed power source. One of the challenges regarding pulsed power applications is energy efficiency optimization. Optimal efficiency is essential for future implementation of this technique on industrial scale. Past research has shown that matching the corona reactor to the pulse source increases the efficiency. The major difficulty with matching is the rapidly varying impedance of the load before, during and after plasma generation. These three stages can be modelled separately to obtain general guidelines for efficiency optimization. This paper describes the results of measurements performed to investigate the influence of the reactor capacitance and applied voltage (pulse charging voltage and DC) on matching. The capacitance of the wire-plate reactor was changed by varying the number of corona wires and adding capacitors in parallel to the reactor. The presented results clearly show that by paying proper attention to matching, i.e. choosing a good reactor capacitance and sufficient voltage amplitude, the efficiency can be increased significantly. The models derived can directly be used for efficiency optimization.