Characteristics of Electrode-Water-Electrode Discharge and its Application to Water Treatment

Atmospheric air discharge above the surface of water is an effective method for water treatment. The leakage current and Joule heating of water are reduced by the air gap, which raises the energy efficiency of the water treatment. However, the application of this kind of discharge is limited by a pair of conflicting factors: the chemical efficiency grows as the discharge gap distance decreases, while the spark breakdown voltage decreases as the gap distance decreases. To raise the spark breakdown voltage and the chemical efficiency of atmospheric pressure water surface discharge, both the high-voltage electrode and the ground electrode are suspended above the water surface to form an electrode-water-electrode discharge system. For this system, there are two potential discharge directions: from one electrode to another directly, and from the electrodes to the water surface. The first step in utilizing the electrode-water-electrode discharge is to find out the discharge direction transition criterion. In this paper, the discharge direction transition criterions of spark discharge and streamer discharge are presented. By comparing the discharge characteristics and the chemical efficiencies, the discharge propagating from the electrodes to the water surface is proved to be more suitable for water treatment than that propagating directly between the electrodes.