Impulse corona simulation for flue gas treatment

Abstract

The lack of experimental results on transport coefficients in flue gases makes the macroscopic discharge models not applicable to the simulation of impulse corona for flue gas treatment. In the present paper the microscopic formulation, based on Boltzmann and Poisson's equations, is analyzed and a simplified model is derived. This has been numerically implemented in two sections: in the first one a quasi-uniform, steady-state Boltzmann equation is solved to calculate the electron and ion transport characteristics in any mixture of atmospheric gases (N 2, O 2, CO 2, H 2 O); in the second section the conservation equations for electron, positive and negative ions are solved, together with Poisson's equation. The model has been applied to the simulation of impulse corona discharges in air and flue gases with different compositions. The results indicate that H 2 O and O 2 are the mixture components that play a major role in the attachment processes (at high and low field respectively); as a consequence the corona characteristics are very much affected by the flue gas composition. The optimization of any treatment process must therefore account for the possible variations of the gas composition; the admixture of gaseous products that lead to an improvement of pulse corona characteristics may also be considered. © 1988 IUPAC