Effect of pulse power characteristics and gas flow rate on ozone production in a cylindrical dielectric barrier discharge ozonizer

The effect of pulse voltage, polarity, duty cycle, and oxygen flow rate on ozone production is studied in a coaxial cylindrical-type dielectric barrier discharge ozonizer at atmospheric pressure. For a constant oxygen flow rate, the ozone concentration increases with increasing input voltage and is nearly proportional to the ozone production efficiency. The bipolar waveform of the applied voltage results in higher ozone concentration and production efficiency than the unipolar one (positive or negative) regardless of duty cycle. A higher duty cycle increases the ozone concentration slightly for the unipolar voltage, while it affects little the ozone production efficiency for either voltage polarity. For constant pulse polarity and duty cycle, the ozone concentration decreases with increasing oxygen flow rate, however, the maximum ozone production efficiency for each flow rate shows only a minor difference for the change in flow rate. The results confirm that the ozone production efficiency depends more on the pulse power characteristics and less on the oxygen flow rate.

► An atmospheric-pressure dielectric barrier discharge ozonizer has been developed.
► The bipolar voltage waveform produced ozone more efficiency than the unipolar one.
► The oxygen flow rate affected the ozone production efficiency only a little.
► The ozone production efficiency depended largely on the pulse power characteristics.