High-efficiency electrical charger for nanoparticles

© 2015, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht. An electrical charger, based on a point-to-plate DC corona discharge, for the high-efficiency charging of aerosol particles with diameter of a few nanometers, has been designed, constructed, and evaluated. The discharge takes place between a needle and a perforated plate, and the results presented here have shown that this specific design allows reduction of electrostatic losses of charged particles within the charger in comparison with other typical designs. Besides, the small effective volume of the charger leads to a relatively small diffusion loss of particles. As a consequence of the reduced electrostatic and diffusion losses, the extrinsic charging efficiency attainable is higher than in similar devices.This work was partly supported by Spain’s Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad under Grant MINECOR13/P73.Peer Reviewe