Abstract
Artificial rainmaking is in strong demand especially in arid regions. Traditional methods of seeding various Cloud Condensation Nuclei (CCN) into the clouds are costly and not environment friendly. Possible solutions based on ionization were proposed more than 100 years ago but there is still a lack of convincing verification or evidence. In this report, we demonstrated for the first time the condensation and precipitation (or snowfall) induced by a corona discharge inside a cloud chamber. Ionic wind was found to have played a more significant role than ions as extra CCN. In comparison with another newly emerging femtosecond laser filamentation ionization method, the snow precipitation induced by the corona discharge has about 4 orders of magnitude higher wall-plug efficiency under similar conditions.
Highlights
Drought and desertification become a threat to human survival and development
Precipitation occurred in relatively large quantity. We attribute this phenomenon to the precipitation induced by corona induced ionic wind rather than by the ions as extra Cloud Condensation Nuclei (CCN)
The ionic wind is essentially due to the acceleration of positive charges along the electric field lines originating from the pointed electrode towards the surface of the grounded plate
Summary
Jingjing Ju1, Tie-Jun Wang[1], Ruxin Li1, Shengzhe Du1, Haiyi Sun[1], Yonghong Liu[1,2], Ye Tian[1], Yafeng Bai[1], Yaoxiang Liu[1], Na Chen[1], Jingwei Wang[1], Cheng Wang[1], Jiansheng Liu[1,3], S. We demonstrated for the first time the condensation and precipitation (or snowfall) induced by a corona discharge inside a cloud chamber. Ionic wind was found to have played a more significant role than ions as extra CCN In comparison with another newly emerging femtosecond laser filamentation ionization method, the snow precipitation induced by the corona discharge has about 4 orders of magnitude higher wall-plug efficiency under similar conditions. We attribute this phenomenon to the precipitation induced by corona induced ionic wind rather than by the ions as extra CCN. The ionic wind is essentially due to the acceleration of positive charges along the electric field lines originating from the pointed electrode towards the surface of the grounded plate Collisions of these ions with air molecules would result in flows of air packets/parcels along the directions of the field lines
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