Journal of the Korean Physical Society, Vol. 42, February 2003, pp.

S989S993

Influence of Gas Temperature on Electrical Breakdown in Cylindrical

Electrodes
Han S. Uhm, Seh J. Jung and Hyoung S. Kim
Department of Molecular Science and Technology, Ajou University, Suwon 442-749
The influence of the gas temperature on electrical breakdown properties is investigated for the
cylindrical electrode system. A theoretical model of the electrical breakdown in a cylindrical electrode system is briefly summarized, by making use of Paschens law. The breakdown voltage
increases, reaches its peak and decreases, as the aspect ratio a/b increases from 0.01 to unity, where
a and b are radii of the inner and outer electrodes, respectively. The experimental data agree remarkably well with the theoretical predictions. The breakdown voltage V in a high gas temperature
Tg is given by V = (Tr /Tg )V0 where V0 is the breakdown voltage at the room temperature Tr .
Obviously, the breakdown voltage decreases as the gas temperature Tg increases. The experimental
data agree well with the theoretical values. It is, therefore, concluded that the breakdown voltage
is inversely proportional to the gas temperature Tg as predicted from the theoretical analysis.
PACS numbers: 41.75.Fr
Keywords: Breakdown Voltage, Gas Temperature, Corona Discharge

I. INTRODUCTION
One of the most important applications of atmospheric
pressure plasma is in
the corona discharge system, for the potential reduction
of NOx and SOx gas emissions from diesel engines. The
reason for its usefulness in this application is the high
electron-to-gas temperature ratio in corona discharge
plasmas. Even with a high degree of excitation, the
carrier gas remains moderately cool, making the plasma
generated by the corona discharge especially suitable for
gas purification, [14] and highly efficient in terms of
transferring source power into promoting chemical reaction. Efficient plasma generation is the key issue in the
device. The electrical power needed for the plasma generation is one of the main operating costs of the corona discharge system; less power consumption for plasma generation makes the corona discharge system more economical. However, the conventional corona discharge system
for the emission control application requires a high electrical voltage (typically 45 kV or higher), making its high
voltage modulator heavy and bulky with insulating material. In this context, the application of a conventional
system to a mobile engine is difficult and impractical.
Remember that the discharge gas from a diesel engine
is hot. We, therefore, investigate the influence of the
gas temperature on the electrical breakdown properties
in the cylindrical electrode system.
A theoretical model of the electrical breakdown in a
cylindrical electrode system is briefly summarized in Sec.
E-mail:

2, by making use of Paschens law. The electrical breakdown voltage is obtained in terms of the aspect ratio
a/b, where a and b are radii of the inner and outer electrodes, respectively. The breakdown voltage increases,
reaches its peak and decreases, as the aspect ratio a/b
increases from 0.01 to unity. Experimental investigation of the breakdown voltage is carried out in Sec. 3
for several different gases. The experimental data agree
remarkably well with the theoretical predictions. The
breakdown voltage V in a high gas temperature Tg is
given by V = (Tr /Tg )V0 [Eq. (7)], where V0 is the electrical breakdown voltage in a gas with the ambient room
temperature of Tr = 300 K. As is obvious from Eq. (7),
the breakdown voltage decreases as the gas temperature
Tg increases. The experimental data agree well with the
theoretical values given by Eq. (7). Assuming the gas
temperature Tg = 900 K, which is typical of the discharge gas from a diesel engine, the breakdown voltage
V is one third of that for the room temperature (Tr )
gas. Thus, the required breakdown voltage in a hot gas
can be reduced to below than 15 kV, drastically reducing
the size and weight of the high-voltage modulator, and
thereby making a practical application to a mobile engine. We also remind the reader that the electrical power
is proportional to the square of the electrical voltage in
a capacitive system. Therefore, the required electrical
power of the corona discharge system operating in a hot
gas also decreases drastically, making the system more
economical.

II. THEORETICAL MODEL

hsuhm@ajou.ac.kr

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Journal of the Korean Physical Society, Vol. 42, February 2003

The reactor chamber, where corona discharge plasma

is generated, consists of two coaxial conducting cylinders.
If the electrodes in a cylindrical geometry are assumed
to be infinite coaxial cylinders, the strength E of the
electric field in the space between the cylinders is given
by
E(r) =

V
r ln(b/a)

(1)

where a is the surface radius of the inner cylindrical electrode and b is the inner surface radius of the outer electrode. Note that the radius b must be bigger than the
radius a; in other words, b > a, for physical meaning.
The radial coordinate r is the radial distance from the
axis of the coaxial cylinders. The ionization coefficient
of the discharge gas is very often expressed as

p
(E/p) = hp exp g
,
(2)
E
where E is the electric field strength in units of volts/cm,
and p is the gas pressure in units of atmospheres. The coefficients [57] h and g are obtained from the experimental data. The coefficients h and g of air are given by h =
3.5 103 cm1 atm1 and g = 1.65 105 volt/cmatm,
which are valid only for electric fields satisfying 1.25
103 V/cm atm < E/p < 2 105 V/cmatm. The extra production of charged particles to be added is due
to a secondary effect called the Townsend second ionization coefficient , which represents the extra electron
emission from the cathode and which is defined as the
cathode yield in electrons per incident ions.
The relation between the ionization coefficient and
is given by
b

Z
1
exp dr = 1 +
(3)

which is known as the Townsend criterion, or the sparking criterion. [8,9] Equation (3) will determine the breakdown conditions. Substituting Eqs. (1) and (2) into Eq.
(3) and carrying out a straightforward algebraic manipulation, we obtain [10,11]


b
f (y) = exp(y) exp y
a


g ln(b/a)
1
=
ln 1 +
,
(4)
hV0

where the variable y defined by

 
g
b
y=
ln
pa
V0
a

(5)

is proportional to the pressure p. The breakdown voltage V0 in cylindrical diodes can be determined from Eq.
(4) in terms of the aspect ratio a/b and the gas pressure p. Note that the function f (y) in Eq. (4) is also

Fig. 1. Plots of the theoretical and experimental breakdown voltages versus the aspect ratio a/b for nitrogen gas.

a function of the pressure parameter pa, where a is the

surface radius of the inner electrode. Figure 1 shows
the breakdown voltage (the thin curve) in Eq. (4) in
terms of the ratio a/b and the gas pressure p = 1atm for
the air. The breakdown voltage V0 in cylindrical diodes
[11] has its maximum value at the ratio a/b = 0.3. The
electric field at the inner electrode surface increases to
infinity as the inner electrode radius a decreases to zero,
as shown in Eq. (1). Therefore, the electrical breakdown occurs near the inner electrode surface even for a
relatively small electrical voltage, when a/b 0. The
electric field in the space between the electrodes also increases to infinity when a/b 1, thereby leading to an
electrical breakdown for a small electrical voltage. Obviously, the electrical breakdown occurs easily at the both
limits of a/b 0 and a/b 1. The breakdown voltage
therefore increases as the aspect ratio a/b increases from
zero or the ratio a/b decreases from unity. However, the
maximum breakdown voltage occurs at the aspect ratio
a/b = 0.3, as shown in Fig. 1.
The electrical discharge by the electron impact ionization is determined by the acceleration of electrons in
the applied electric field E. The energy gain of electrons in the electric field is proportional to the multiplication lE where the symbol l represents the mean free
path of electrons. The electron mean free path l is inversely proportional to the neutral number density of n.
In this regard, the most important parameter governing
the electrical discharge is E/n, where the symbol n represents the neutral number density in the chamber. The
system parameters of most corona discharge applications
follow the simple ideal gas law expressed by
p
= const.
nTg

(6)

for a specified chamber volume. Here, p is the pressure inside the system and Tg is the gas temperature in

Influence of Gas Temperature on Electrical Han S. Uhm et al.

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Fig. 2. Schematic presentation of the experimental device

for the measurement of the breakdown voltage.

Kelvin. Therefore, the essential parameter of the electrical discharge in an electric field is ET/p. The breakdown
field in a hot gas is given by [12] E/p = cT r /Tg , where Tr
is the room temperature and Tg is the gas temperature.
The constant c is experimentally measured for gases, and
it is in units of kV/cmatm. The breakdown electric field
E is inversely proportional to gas temperature, thereby
decreasing as the gas temperature increases. Therefore,
the breakdown voltage V in a hot gas is given by

V =

Tr
V0
Tg

(7)

where V0 is the breakdown voltage in an ambient room

temperature gas of Tr = 300K, obtained from Eq. (4)
for specified physical parameters. As is obvious from Eq.
(7), the breakdown voltage decreases as the gas temperature Tg increases.

III. EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF

BREAKDOWN VOLTAGE
The electrical breakdown voltage V0 in a room temperature gas is investigated experimentally in terms of the
aspect ratio a/b. The outer electrode is made of copper
pipe, whose inner surface radius is b = 0.695 cm. The
inner electrode is a stainless steel stick. The radius of
the inner electrode varies from a = 0.1 cm to 0.4 cm.
The electrical breakdown voltage is measured for several different gases at the atmospheric pressure. Shown
in Fig. 1 are plots of the breakdown voltage versus the
aspect ratio a/b in the nitrogen gas at the room temperature. The closed square dots are experimental data for
the anode at the inner electrode and the closed circles
represent the experimental data for the cathode at the
inner electrode. The breakdown voltage V0 shown in Eq.
(4) does not depend on the polarity of the electric field in
the diode. However, the experimental data in Fig. 1 indicate that the breakdown voltage for the inner anode is

Fig. 3. Plots of experimental and theoretical values for

breakdown voltage versus air temperature. The solid and
dashed lines represent the theoretical value for the positive
and negative inner electrode, respectively. The square and
circular dots are the experimental data, respectively.

slightly higher than that for the inner cathode. The ratio
of the coefficient gni for nitrogen to the coefficient gair
for air is found [9] to be gni /gair = 0.94. Thus, the coefficient g for nitrogen molecules is given by gni = 1.55
105 volt/cmatm for gair =1.65105 volt/cmatm. The
secondary ionization coefficient is not known and is
also difficult to measure. We, therefore, define the coefficient = ln(1+1/)/h, which is a logarithmic function
of the coefficient . The curve in Fig. 1 is obtained
from Eq. (4) for = 3.26 103 cmatm, which is the
least-squares-fitted to the experimental data. Both the
theoretical results and experimental data indicate that
the breakdown voltage in a cylindrical electrode system
has its maximum value at the aspect ratio a/b = 0.3.
The experimental data agree reasonably well with the
theoretical curve.
The influence of the gas temperature on the breakdown voltage in a cylindrical electrode system is investigated by making use of a high temperature furnace.
Figure 2 shows the experimental configuration for the
high gas-temperature experiment, where the outer electrode is made of copper pipe and the inner electrode is
a stainless steel stick. The radii of the outer and inner
electrodes are b = 1.165 cm and a = 0.35 cm, respectively, which corresponds to the aspect ratio a/b = 0.3.
The measured temperature of the furnace varies from Tg
= 300K to 1300K. The breakdown voltages in several
gases are measured in terms of the gas temperature Tg at
the atmospheric pressure, by changing the electric field
polarity.
The closed dots in Figs. 3-5 represent the experimental data of the breakdown voltage for the ratio a/b = 0.3.
The square dots are the data measured for the anode at
the inner electrode and the circular dots are for the cathode at the inner electrode. For comparison of the theoret-

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Journal of the Korean Physical Society, Vol. 42, February 2003

We, therefore, conclude that the breakdown voltage is

inversely proportional to the gas temperature Tg as predicted from the theoretical equation (7). However, there
are a small difference of the breakdown voltage in Figs.
3 and 4, which appears between the experimental results
in the cases of the inner-electrode anode and cathode.
Particularly, the experimental data for the inner anode
case deviates considerably from the theoretical predictions, as shown in the closed square dots in Figs. 3 and
4. Perhaps, this experimental deviation may be caused
by metastable excitation states of the nitrogen molecules.
We are currently investigating this difference both theoretically and experimentally.

Fig. 4. Plots of experimental and theoretical values for

the breakdown voltage versus the nitrogen gas temperature.
The solid and dashed lines represent the theoretical value for
the positive and negative inner electrode, respectively. The
square and circular dots are the experimental data, respectively.

ical results with experimental data, the solid and dashed

curves in Figs. 3 5 are obtained from Eq. (7) by making use of the measured breakdown voltage V0 at Tg = Tr
= 300K for each data set. Figures 3, 4, and 5 present
the breakdown voltage for the air, nitrogen and oxygen
molecules, respectively, which clearly indicate that the
theoretical results from Eq. (7) agree reasonably well
with experimental data, although the theoretical values
of the breakdown voltage are slightly less than the experimental data around the gas temperature Tg = 600K.

IV. CONCLUSIONS
The influence of gas temperature on electrical breakdown properties was investigated in this article for cylindrical electrode systems. A theoretical model of the electrical breakdown in a cylindrical electrode system was
briefly summarized in Sec. II, by making use of Paschens
law. The breakdown voltage increases, reaches its peak
and decreases, as the aspect ratio a/b increases from 0.01
to unity. Experimental investigation of the breakdown
voltage was carried out in Sec. III for several different
gases. The experimental data agree remarkably well with
the theoretical predictions. The breakdown voltage V in
a high gas temperature Tg is given by V = (Tr /Tg )V0 .
Obviously, the breakdown voltage decreases as the gas
temperature Tg increases. The experimental data agree
well with the theoretical values. We, therefore, conclude
that the breakdown voltage is inversely proportional to
the gas temperature Tg as predicted from the theoretical
Equation (7).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported by the Plasma & Fusion User
Development Program.

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Fig. 5. Plots of experimental and theoretical values for

the breakdown voltage versus the oxygen gas temperature.
The solid and dashed lines represent the theoretical value for
the positive and negative inner electrode, respectively. The
square and circular dots are the experimental data, respectively.

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