Abstract
Electric discharge in liquids is an emerging field of research, and is involved
into various environmental applications (water purification, fuel reforming,
nanomaterial synthesis, etc.). Increasing the treatment efficiency with
simultaneous decreasing of the energy consumption are the main goals of
today’s research. Here we present an experimental study of nanosecond
discharge in distilled water covered by a layer of dielectric material. We
demonstrate through this paper that the discharge efficiency can be improved by
changing the interface position regarding the anode tip. The efficiency increase
is due to the increase of the discharge probability as well as the plasma
volume. The understanding of the experimental results is brought and
strengthened by simulating the electric field distribution, using Comsol
Multiphysics software. Because the dielectric permittivity
(
ε
)
is discontinuous at the interface, the electric
field is enhanced by a factor that depends on the relative value of
ε
of the two liquids. The present result is very
promising in future: opportunities for potential applications as well as
fundamental studies for discharges in liquid.