Simulation of corona discharge in DC electrostatic precipitator

Abstract

The stable positive DC corona discharge in atmospheric air under a wire-to-cylinder system is analyzed in this paper. An iterative finite element technique is developed to obtain a general solution of the governing equations of the coupled space-charge and electric field problem. The technique is to use the finite-element method (FEM) to solve Poisson's equation and the method of characteristics (MOC) to find the charge density from a current-continuity relation. Besides, the corona ionized field is successfully modeled using COMSOL MULTIPHYSICS 3.4. Two application modes are used to solve system of coupled equations with appropriate boundary conditions: PDE (General Form) mode for electric potential distribution and Convection and Diffusion mode for charge transport equation. In order to validate the presented numerical methods a comparison with analytical solution and measured data are made. The obtained results are in good agreement.