Electrical Breakdown Characteristics of Soil under Pulse High Voltage

A number of studies have been carried out on the breakdown of soil under large impulse current in the grounding of power systems. In contrast, there is less research on the electrical discharges for soil remediation. These types of discharges are usually non-thermal. It’s necessary to have an in-depth understanding of the key physical and chemical mechanisms underlying electrical discharge process for soil remediation. This paper studies the corona discharge characteristics in soil produced by pulsed high voltage excitations. A new method is applied to obtain the images of electrical discharge in soil and the discharge phenomena are analyzed. The voltage and current waveforms are investigated. The effects of applied voltage and pulse width are studied through experiments. The mechanisms behind the experimental phenomena are discussed.