Experimental Study of Magnetic Field Effect on dc Corona Discharge in Low Vacuum

Abstract

In the present paper, an attempt was made to investigate the effect of applying a transverse magnetic field on the dc corona discharge behavior in low vacuum. In general, two experiments were carried out in this work: the first is the ionization-region magnetic field experiment, and the second was the drift region magnetic field experiment. In these experiments, permanent magnets were used to produce magnetic field. The degree of vacuum used in this test was 0.4×105 Pa. It is found that the effect of the magnetic field increases as the degree of vacuum increases. It is also seen from this study that the corona current values are higher with magnetic fields than without magnetic fields. The experimental results indicate that the enhancement of the magnetic field near the wire discharge electrode has a significant influence on the increment of the discharge current. The effect of the magnetic field on the discharge current is the most significant with the negative corona discharges rather than with positive corona discharge. In contrast to, the curves were demonstrated that the application of magnetic fields in drift region magnetic field does not significantly change the corona discharge current. Discharge characteristics of magnetically enhanced corona discharges, extracted from this study, can be applied to various industrial applications, such as, in an electrostatic enhancement filter for the purpose of capturing fine particles, and as effective method for production of high ozone concentrations in a generator as compared to the ultraviolet (UV) radiation method.