This paper mainly focuses on the influence of three kinds of media: air, air-10%PA (Nylon) and air-10% POM (polyoxymethylene) on low-voltage circuit breaker arcs. A threedimensional (3-D) model of arc motioa under the effect of external magnetic field is built based on magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) equations. By adopting the commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) package based on the control-volume method, the above MHD equations are solved. For the media of air-10%PA and air-10%POM, the distributions of stationary temperature and electrical potential and the transient motion processes are compared with those of air arc. The research shows that both air-10%PA and air -10% POM can cool the arc plasma and the former is more effective. Both of them can increase the stationary voltage as well. Moreover, the presence of the two mixtures can accelerate the arc motion toward the quenching area and ensures the arc quenched in time.
Based on a two-dimensional axisymmetric magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) model, low current vacuum arc (LCVA) characteristics are studied. The influence of cathode process under different axial magnetic fields and different anode radii on LCVA characteristics is also simulated. The results show that the influence of both cathode process and anode radii on LCVA is significant. The sign of anode sheath potentials can change from negative to positive with the decrease of anode radii. The simulation results are in part verified by experimental results. Especially, as the effect of ion kinetic energy is considered, ion temperature is improved significantly; which is in agreement with experimental results.
Dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) for SOs removal from indoor air is investigated. In order to improve the removal efficiency, two novel methods are combined in this paper, namely by applying a pulsed driving voltage with nanosecond rising time and applying a magnetic field. For SOs removal efficiency, different matches of electric field and magnetic field are discussed. And nanosecond rising edge pulsed power supply and microsecond rising edge pulsed power supply are compared. It can be concluded that a pulsed DBD with nanosecond rising edge should be adopted, and electrical field and magnetic field should be applied in an appropriate match.