Hysteresis effect of corona discharge in a narrow coaxial wire-pipe discharge tube with gas flow

An experimental investigation has been conducted to study corona discharge in a narrow tube. Narrow or capillary corona discharge (discharge tube diameter d/spl ap/1-20 mm) is used for many industrial applications such as flue gas cleaning corona-induced plasma reactors, ion sources, and electrohydrodynamic heat exchangers. In this work, corona discharge characteristics of a narrow coaxial wire-pipe discharge tube with gas flow are experimentally investigated. The results show that, unlike normal corona discharge, a hysteresis in the corona discharge current-voltage characteristic was observed for narrow tube discharges. The onset of the corona discharge was observed to be significantly dependent on the gas temperature and gas flow rates.