Effect of an external electric field on the charge distribution of electrostatic coagulation

This article analyzes the effect of an external electric field on the charge distribution of bipolar and unipolar charged particles numerically by solving the coagulation equation for charged particles, based on the analytical expression for the coagulation coefficient [Wang, L. Z., Zhang, X. R., & Zhu, K. Q. (2005). An analytical expression for the coagulation coefficient of bipolarly charged particles by an external electric field with the effect of Coulomb force. Journal of Aerosol Science, 36, 1050–1055]. For symmetric bipolar charged particles, the external electric field does not change the symmetry of the initial charge distribution as the coagulation time increases. In addition, the particle number concentration decays monotonically during coagulation regardless of the magnitude of the particle charge. For asymmetric bipolar charged and unipolar charged particles, however, the particle number concentration does not decay monotonically for each value of charge during coagulation, due to the effect of an external electric field.