Abstract
Many reports associate electrostatic charge in dielectrics with water, either bulk, finely dispersed in aerosol or as atmospheric vapor. Two widespread but currently controversial assumptions relevant to this topic are the prevalence of electroneutrality and the passive role of water in electrical phenomena, dissipating charge due to its significant electrical conductivity. Early reports from Faraday, Kelvin and their contemporaries also point towards an active role of water as an electrifying agent. Unfortunately, these have been largely ignored or treated as scattered pieces of scientific curiosity, for over a century. New trends in this area have been developing since the late 1990s, due to a number of findings leading to radically new ideas. These derive from the experimental demonstration of widespread occurrence of non-electroneutral water and from charge partition associated with a number of interfacial phenomena, even in electrically shielded environments within grounded enclosures. This is an account on the formation and persistence of electrified water in various natural or anthropic environments, followed by experimental results obtained under well-defined conditions that are revealing different mechanisms for the role of water in charge acquisition and dissipation in dielectrics.
Highlights
Electrostatics is an old area of scientific research that lagged behind most other areas of natural sciences and especially chemistry and physics, during the 20th century.[1,2]
Aqueous aerosols participate in most anthropic environments, from the sprays used in agriculture to the plume leaving power plants, inhalers used for medical purpose, Flügge drops[38] emitted by humans that may remain in the atmosphere for long periods and a host of other systems
Non-electroneutral water is spontaneously formed under many circumstances, in natural and anthropic environments and it can be reproducibly obtained in the laboratory, by performing relatively simple experiments
Summary
Electrostatics is an old area of scientific research that lagged behind most other areas of natural sciences and especially chemistry and physics, during the 20th century.[1,2] This odd situation is largely due to persistent oversimplification of complex phenomena and to widespread but unproven ideas on the nature of excess charge in dielectrics, as well as on its formation and stability.[3]. The role of interfaces as important sites for electric charge accumulation or exchange is well established in solid-solid, liquid-liquid and liquid-solid systems.[4] this is not the case for gas-liquid or gas-solid interfaces. A short account on the current situation is in the following paragraphs
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