Electrostatic charging and precipitation of nanoparticles in technical nitrogen: Highly efficient diffusion charging by hot free electrons

Electrostatic charging and deposition of a liquid nano-aerosol was studied in dry air and in technical (3.6 % O-2) nitrogen. The experiments have shown that electronic charging of aerosols can be important in technical scale electrostatic precipitators (ESPs). Already at operation voltages just slightly above the corona onset voltage, the contribution of the free electrons to the overall current is estimated to be around 50 %. Due to the high temperature of free electrons, diffusion charging by free electrons allows to reach exceptionally high particle charge and extremely high precipitation efficiency. A strongly simplified theoretical model was developed, which gives a good prediction of particle charge based on averaged values of particle diameter, current density, electric field strength, electron temperature and residence time. The ion mobilities were determined by fitting the current-voltage characteristics with a modified Townsend (Monrolin et al. 2018) equation and are significantly higher than the values typically used to describe diffusion charging in air. This may be ascribed to the very dry gas phase and the short average lifespan of the ions under ESP conditions, which is in the order of 1 ms. From the practical point of view, electronic charging might be relevant in a number of technical applications, including high temperature ESPs, ESP applications in dry and oxygen-free gases and pulsed corona systems.