Numerical Investigation on the Electrical Characteristics and Electron Energy Transformation of Pulsed Dielectric Barrier Discharge for Ozone Generation

A numerical model consisting of 12 species and 65 reactions is developed and experimentally verified to be valid for the investigation of electrical characteristics and electron energy transformation in oxygen-fed pulsed dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) for ozone generation. The simulation results show that there are two obvious discharges with opposite polarity in one pulse which agrees with many experimental observations. The first discharge is at the rising edge of pulse voltage, and the second discharge is at the falling edge. The former has a much higher current density than that of the latter. Moreover, a higher peak voltage results in an earlier and higher ignition voltage as well as a higher maximum current density. The contrary behavior for rising time is observed, and the ignition and maximum current density are independent of pulsewidth. In addition, the temporal distributions of total input power density, electron power density, and power density of electron consumed by reactions are obtained for the first discharge in DBD for the ozone generation. Only 19.35% of the total input energy within the first discharge is absorbed by electrons when peak voltage, rising time, and pulsewidth are 9 kV, 63.8 ns, and 100 ns, respectively, and 41.09% of electron energy is utilized effectively to form ozone.