Corona discharge behavior in foggy environments with flat plate and fin plate electrodes

Abstract

The corona discharge is widely used to charge fog droplets. However, there is a lack of an accurate description of the interaction between fog droplets and the corona discharge process. Discharge currents of the two wire-plate devices in two foggy environments were measured experimentally. It was found that fog droplets floating in the air restrained the corona discharge process, and the effect of fog droplets was more significant than that of humidity variation. The discharge current decreases with increasing fog concentration. In addition, the electrohydrodynamic flow enhances the flow near the collection electrode and prevents large droplets from hanging on the collection electrode. The experimental results demonstrate that the corona discharge behaviors for the two devices comprising two types of collection electrodes are similar. The numerical prediction agreed well with the experimental data when the contribution of the droplet charge to the voltage and ion charge density was considered.