Research on the influence of conductivity to pulsed arc electrohydraulic discharge in water

• The conductivity affected the process of PAED has been investigated.
• The breakdown probability is closely related to the water conductivity.
• Along with increasing of water conductivity, pre-breakdown delay time will reduce.
• The generation of active groups is closed relevant to the water conductivity.
• The conductivity effects energy efficiency can determine the sterilizing rate.

Pulsed arc electrohydraulic discharge (PAED) is a kind of thermal plasma arc discharge phenomenon which can generate strong pressure wave, ultraviolet ray and active groups. Therefore, PAED can act as a significant role applying on the technology of water treatment and it has broad application prospects. Compared with the existing water treatment mechanism, the technology of PAED possesses the most sterilization efficient and no secondary pollution. There are a huge number of plasma, active groups and gas liquid mixtures generated between the two arc electrodes in the water medium when the streamer discharge voltage is 3∼5 kV. In addition, water conductivity is also changed with the development of pulse arc electrohydraulic discharge which should be the prime importance in the process of PAED. In this article, firstly we analyzed the discharge mechanism on the process of pulsed arc electrohydraulic discharge. After that how the conductivity had played a major role in the process of pre-breakdown discharge and the main discharge processes will be discussed in detail. Experiments were conducted to research the relation among the conductivity, the pressure wave, active groups, ultraviolet light, discharge current and voltage generated from PAED. In finally the result can become a basis for using the water treatment tech of pulsed arc electrohydraulic discharge on different conductivity.

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