Mechanism of Phase Transition from Liquid to Gas under Dielectric Barrier Discharge Plasma

Liquid gasification phenomenon was observable in liquid-solid dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) experiments. Starting from classical thermodynamics, this study aimed at finding the reason of liquid gasification in the DBD experiments. Fluid statics and electrohydrodynamics were adopted to analyze the mechanism of phase transition from liquid to gas. The Sumoto effect was also employed to visually explain the change in the pressure of fluid due to the electric field. It was concluded from both theoretical analysis and experiment that the change in liquid pressure was a key factor causing liquid to gasify in DBD conditions. Furthermore, it was stressed that the liquid pressure was affected by many parameters including liquid permittivity, voltage, electric intensity, size of the discharge space and uniformity of the electric field distribution, etc. All of them affected DBD liquid gasification. The related results would provide useful theoretical evidence for multi- phase DBD applications.