Electrostatic Spraying of Insulating Liquids: H2

Theoretical and experimental results on the electrostatic spraying of liquid insulators are presented. The spraying is accomplished by injecting charges into the liquid with a sharp electrode raised to a high potential. The resulting electrical force causes the liquid to form a jet which breaks up into small drops. The droplet size decreases as the injected current is increased. A theory is developed which predicts the radius of the jet for various values of the system parameters. The experiments reported are on liquid hydrogen.