Particle Charging in DC Corona Fields
After a brief review of the currently accepted theory of particle charging in corona fields in air by both ionic bombardment and diffusion in the dark space surrounding the dc corona glow, the paper presents some of the recently published findings on particle charging within the corona glow. The study was made possible by the discovery that additions of CO2 to air in a 5 to 20% range will increase a cylindrical positive corona glow to a size which is sufficiently large to allow particles to be dropped on to various trajectories parallel to the corona wire and their charge to be measured. The influence of the shape of the particles when exposed to corona charging is also discussed.
Bi-Ionized Space Charges Generated by Means of Corona
Due to the extensive usage of unipolar corona in electrostatic precipitators, electrostatic painting, mineral ore separation, and other applications, most of the past studies of particle charging and electric fields in space-charge regions have focused on the unipolar corona. As such, while the basic equations for particle charging in bi-ionized fields are known, relatively little experimental work may be found in the literature. A test chamber and a wire probe assembly have been constructed allowing the investigation of electric fields in the bi-ionized space between parallel wire coronas for various gas mixtures, pressures, and spacings. Results are presented for experiments in air, CO2, and CO2-nitrogen mixtures, and they seem to indicate that a substantial amount of recombination of positive and negative ions occurs. The resulting average electric field intensity over a large section of the bi-ionized space between the corona wires was found to be uniform.
The Properties of Dielectrics
As more general interest is now being taken in dielectric actions, it may be useful to give some conclusions derived from a long study of them.