Journal of Electrostatics 76 (2015) 108e114

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Journal of Electrostatics
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/elstat

Effect of relative humidity on currentevoltage characteristics

of monopolar DC wire-to-plane system
Massinissa Aissou a, b, *, Hakim Ait Said a, Hamou Nouri a, c, Youcef Zebboudj a
a
Laboratoire de Genie Electrique, Universit
e A. Mira de B
ejaïa, 06000 Bejaïa, Algeria
b
Electrical Engineering Department, University Center of Ain Temouchent, 46000, Algeria
c
Electrical Engineering Department, University of Setif_1, 19000, Algeria

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This paper deals with the DC monopolar corona discharge in wire-to-plane geometry under variable
Received 15 January 2015 humid air conditions. The classical formulas of Townsend commonly used for the currentevoltage
Received in revised form characteristics were used to determine the various corona parameters for the both polarities of the
8 May 2015
corona discharge. A circular biased probe has been adapted to the plane and is used to measure the
Accepted 15 May 2015
Available online 26 May 2015
ground plane current density and electric field during the monopolar corona discharge. A new approach
to the problem of corona discharge in transmission system has been described in this paper. The effect of
varying the humidity and wires diameter is also investigated. The values of the electric field and the
Keywords:
Corona discharge
current density are maximum beneath the corona wire and decrease when moving away from them and
Relative humidity the currentevoltage characteristics follow the quadratic Townsend's law. The experimental results show
Current density that the monopolar corona discharge is strongly affected by the air humidity. The current density and the
Electric voltage electric field are measured and compared with the computed values. The agreement between the
Electric field calculated values and those obtained experimentally is satisfactory. The per unit electric field and current
HVDC transmission density are also represented by a unique function.
© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction may, for example, cause radio interference, audible noise and
electrification of objects, in addition to generating power losses.
The stable corona discharge is used in various ways in an Also, the space-charges will affect the natural balance of ions in the
increasing number of engineering applications. Corona discharges air, which might have some unknown biological and environmental
are partially ionized gas discharges that occur between a sharp effects. Therefore, it is of interest to study the fields associated with
electrode (called a corona source), typically a needle or a wire, and a HVDC power transmission lines in the presence of corona, both
blunt electrode (called a collecting electrode or counter electrode) theoretically and experimentally.
such as a plate or a cylinder. Corona discharges have been a field of Monopolar DC corona discharge consists of high-field active
study since early in the 20th century as a detrimental mode of electrode surrounded by ionization region where free charges are
breakdown in high voltage conductors. But because of the wide produced, a low-field drift region where charged particles drift and
variety of possible configurations and operating conditions, corona a low-field electrode acting as a charge collector [9e11]. Fig. 1
discharges have also been developed for applications as varied as shows a simple monopolar DC wire-to-plane system. It consists
electrostatic precipitation and separators [1e3], painting and of one wire, with a radius R, located at a height H above the ground
spraying powders [4,5], ozone generation [6] and flow generation plane. Assuming the wire to be infinitely long, the problem is
and control [7] to chemical analysis [8]. considered two-dimensional in Cartesian coordinates.
However, the corona effect produced by overhead HVDC trans- The corona drift region is governed by the Poisson and current
mission lines forms space-charges in the surrounding air which continuity equations. A complete solution of these equations is not
straightforward. For practical applications, therefore, many authors
have made some simplifying assumptions for the basic equations
* Corresponding author. Laboratoire de Ge nie Electrique, Universite
 A. Mira de and empirical and semi empirical formulas have a useful function
jaïa, 06000 Be
Be jaïa, Algeria.
[26,27]. Actually, the ions created in the ionization region drift to
E-mail address: aissoumas@yahoo.fr (M. Aissou).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.elstat.2015.05.019
0304-3886/© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
 M. Aissou et al. / Journal of Electrostatics 76 (2015) 108e114 109

relative to the plane. The active electrode is raised to positive or

negative potential.
The circular probe (P) is made of solid aluminum, is incorpo-
rated in the same surface level in a plane (E), provided with two
guard planes whose role is to prevent the end-effects of current,
and the assembly thus forming the collector electrode. The plane
(E) and guard planes of respective dimension 180  800 mm2 and
150  800 mm2 are fixed with insulating props (2), and the leakage
current between high voltage wire and the plane (E) of the mea-
surement is evacuated to the earth by guard planes and reinforced
with the stainless steel plane (3). The current collector (P) was fixed
with two insulating plates (4) and connected to a picoammeter (8)
via a coaxial cable for measuring the corona current.

2.2. Electrical measurements and air system supply

The positive or negative direct voltage, supplied by a 0 to

±140 kV source (5), was applied to the wire and the high voltage
divider (7). A DC digital voltmeter (6) was used to measure the
Fig. 1. Monopolar wire-to-plane configuration.
applied voltage. The polarization plane is connected to a low
voltage DC supply (15) across which is connected a digital volt-
meter for measuring the bias voltage Vb supplied. The electrode
the passive electrode and the space charge modifies the original system and the measurement devices of temperature and humidity
Laplacian applied field. Many theoretical and experimental works were placed into a plexiglas box of 200 L (9). The air inside this box
have been devoted to the study of the discharge behavior with came from the ambient atmosphere and was made to move in
various electrode systems. However, measurements of the modi- closed circulation by a pump (10). The humidity was controlled
fied electric field over the collector electrode are not easy in the with a three-way circuit with taps. Air was hydrated (12) with the
presence of space charge. water vapor provided by heating a half full bottle of distilled water;
It is found that there are a number of physical phenomena of ways (13) and (11) being closed. The drying of the air was made by
discharge without requiring interpretation and analysis as well as the way (13) by using silicagel contained in a bottle, when the ways
to find mathematical models that provide necessary and sufficient (11) and (12) were closed. The opening of way (11) and the closing
information on the evolution of the discharge in different config- of ways (12) and (13) of the circuit allow a constant humidity to be
urations. These physical parameters may be: speed air flow, pres- kept inside the box. Air was then filtered (14) before it was let in the
sure, and humidity. The chemical composition of charged particles box again. In order to eliminate the possible influence of the air
moving between the electrodes is another important parameter. flow on the corona discharge, the pump was stopped during the
The regrouping of these parameters is a bit difficult but it is very measurements.
necessary to optimize the operation of the corona discharge.
In this paper, we have proposed a method to measure the cur- 3. Results and discussion
rent density and electric field at the grounded plane where the
humidity of ambient air is associated. The method uses the biased- The present work is concerned with the measurements of cur-
current probe, which was introduced by Tassicker [12] and further rent density, electric field distributions at the plane surface and the
developed by many authors [13e16]. This type of probe can be corona currentevoltage characteristics with a biased probe during
miniaturized and is suitable for DC corona discharge investigations. the monopolar DC corona discharge. The wire is positioned along
A linear probe is used for current density and electric field mea- the z-axis and the x-position of the probe collector on the passive
surements during the DC corona discharge in wire-to-plane [16,17]. electrode are achieved by displacing the wire (Fig. 1). The mea-
The probe collector is of rectangular form and surrounded by two surements are carried out for various parameters such as:
plates biased at a voltage Vb. For the first time, we use the circular
biased probe in the presence of space charge during the monopolar - The applied voltage V (þV or eV);
corona discharge. - The x-position of the probe on the plane;
- The wire radius R;
- The relative humidity RH.
2. Experimental arrangement
The gap between the wire and the collector is H ¼ 50 mm. The
2.1. Electrode system tests are done within a large range of the corona voltage with
varying humidity levels. The temperature and the pressure inside
The choice of the geometry is based on a wire-plane configu- the box remain practically constant during the tests.
ration because it is easy to implement and can work according to
different physical parameters. The nature of the high voltage 3.1. Currentevoltage characteristics
electrode may influence the threshold voltage of the corona.
Stainless steel machined electrodes are used in this work, because The corona discharge is typically characterized by the cur-
this type of metals strongly supports the mechanical and electrical rentevoltage relationship. The current increases from the inception
constraints with a considerable service lifetime. corona voltage up to the breakdown voltage. Townsend has intro-
The electrode system consists of a nickel wire (1), with a small duced a law that bears his name, between the current and the
radius of curvature R and a set of planes grounded Fig. 2. The active voltage for corona discharge in a coaxial wire-cylinder [18]. Later, it
electrode is fixed by two insulating supports at a height H ¼ 50 mm was found that this law could also be applied to the wire-to-plane
110 M. Aissou et al. / Journal of Electrostatics 76 (2015) 108e114

Fig. 2. Experimental setup.

geometry [19]. The corona IeV characteristics obey Townsend's separation are assumed to be constant, with values RH ¼ 50%;

quadratic law over a wide range of applied voltages. According to T ¼ 20 C; P ¼ 758 mmHg and H ¼ 50 mm, respectively.
this law, the corona current varies with applied voltage in the Fig. 3 illustrate that the wire diameter affects the cur-
following way: rentevoltage characteristics. In fact, the inception voltage V0 in-
creases when 2R increases and the corona current decrease when
I ¼ K$V$ðV  V0 Þ ðA=mÞ; (1) wire diameter increases.

where I is the corona discharge current, V the supplied voltage, V0

the corona inception voltage and K a dimensional constant 3.1.2. Effect of relative humidity (RH) on currentevoltage
depending on the inter-electrode distance, the wire electrode characteristic
radius, the charge carrier mobility in the drift region, the air hu- Figs. 4e6 shows the current versus voltage (I e V characteristics)
midity and other geometrical factors. Another important feature for both types of positive and negative corona discharge. The cur-
with the eq. (1) is that corona inception voltage is reflected in them. rentevoltage I ¼ f(V) characteristics are measured for the three
The corona inception voltage V0 is determined by extrapolating the tested wires and for various relative humidities. They follow the
fitting straight lines to the voltage axis Fig. 7. And the extrapolated Townsend's law.
voltage physically should always locate on the right side of the
ordinate and has the same polarity as the corona. From eq. (1), we - The effect of the polarity in Fig. 4. In fact, the negative values of
can write: current are higher than the positive ones for the same applied

I=V ¼ K$ðV  V0 Þ; (2)

In this case, it is possible to explore the relationship between the
corona current I and the voltage-difference V e V0. H. Aitsaid et all
[20] demonstrated that factor K for positive and negative corona
can easily be determined experimentally from curve fitting of the
current/voltage ratio I/V versus the voltage-difference, it is found
that: K/Kþ ¼ m/mþ z 1.085, Where: m: is the negative ion
mobility (m2/V$s), and mþ: is the positive ion mobility (m2/V$s).

3.1.1. Effect of wire diameter

Reducing the wire diameter reinforces the electric field in its
vicinity. Thus, according to Peek's law [28], the inception voltage of
corona discharge decreases, and the corona current is corre-
spondingly higher at a fixed value of the applied voltage. Here,
three different values of the corona wire diameter will be consid-
ered: 2R ¼ 0.2 mm, 2R ¼ 0.4 mm and 2R ¼ 0.8 mm, to which
correspond the inceptions voltage for the positive monopolar DC Fig. 3. Measured currentevoltage characteristics for various wire diameters for the

9 kV, 13 kV and 18 kV, respectively. The air conditions and electrode positive Monopolar DC: Hr ¼ 50%; T ¼ 20 C; P ¼ 758 mmHg.
 M. Aissou et al. / Journal of Electrostatics 76 (2015) 108e114 111

Fig. 4. Measured currentevoltage characteristics for the 2R ¼ 0.2 mm diameter in

 Fig. 7. Corona conductance characteristics for the 2R ¼ 0.2 mm diameter in various
various relative humidities: T ¼ 18 C, P ¼ 759 mmHg (a) the positive monopolar; (b) 
relative humidity for the positive monopolar: (T ¼ 18 C, P ¼ 758 mmHg).
the negative monopolar.

voltage. This is due to the existence of a difference between the

positive inception voltage and the negative one; also the
mobility of the negative ions is higher than that of the positive
ions.
- The presence of relative humidity RH affect the currentevoltage
characteristic of the positive corona discharge, in Fig. 5 and
negative corona discharge in Fig. 6. At a given applied voltage
when RH increases, the corona current decreases significantly.
This is due to the electronegative nature of water vapor; adding
water vapor to air would increase the attachment coefficient of
the mixture, while the ionization coefficient would be constant.
Furthermore, the ion mobility decreases with the humidity.

3.2. Variation of the exponent (m)

Mathematically processing the experimental data and applying

the updated knowledge of corona inception, eq. (1) was later
modified by X. Meng and all [21], a new general formula in char-
Fig. 5. Measured currentevoltage characteristics for the 2R ¼ 0.2 mm diameter in
acterizing the relationship of corona currentevoltage was derived

various relative humidities for the positive monopolar: (T ¼ 18 C, P ¼ 758 mmHg). and expressed as:

I ¼ A$ðV  V0 Þm ; (3)
The exponent m and the geometric factor A can be easily
determined for both positive and negative corona by:

log10 ðIÞ ¼ m$log10 ðV  V0 Þ þ b; (4)

Or I ¼ 10b $ðV  V0 Þm ; (5)

therefore A ¼ 10b .
The parameter m can be determined by the slope of the fitting
line. The influence of the wire diameter on the values of the
exponent m along the height H to plane for both positive and
negative corona is shown in Figs. 8 and 9. The exponent m varies
inversely with the change in the diameter of the wire, when the
diameter of the wire increases the exponent m decreases. It can be
summarized that the potential scope for the exponent m falls into a
range of 1.4e2.0; the results are shown in Table 1.
The values of m for the negative corona are always higher than
Fig. 6. Measured currentevoltage characteristics for the 2R ¼ 0.2 mm diameter in those of the positive corona for the same wire diameter. Meng's

various relative humidities for the negative monopolar: (T ¼ 18 C, P ¼ 758 mmHg). formula appeared to be applicable not only for both negative and
112 M. Aissou et al. / Journal of Electrostatics 76 (2015) 108e114

Where rm ¼ 2.25 mm is the effective radius of the probe collector

and I0 is the collected current of corona discharge. The measured
current density and electric field profiles at the ground plane are
shown in Figs. 10 and 11, respectively. The values of J and E are at a
maximum for x ¼ 0 and they decrease as we move away from the
centre of this plane along the x-axis. Configurations of electrodes
such as point-to-plane and wire-to-plane allow spatial variations of
current and electric field on the passive electrodes. In the literature
we can find many methods used for the current density and electric
field distributions. Warburg [22,23] first published the law that
bears his name. This law is referred to as the cos5 and applied to
corona current density for point-to-plane geometry. Other authors
reported attempts to derive Warburg's law and they all gave the
current density and even the electric field distributions under the
following forms:

JðqÞ ¼ Jð0Þcosp ðqÞ (7)

Fig. 8. The dependence of the positive corona current versus the difference voltage (V

e V0) in log scale for various wire diameters: Hr ¼ 50%; T ¼ 19 C; P ¼ 758 mmHg.
EðqÞ ¼ Eð0Þcosq ðqÞ (8)

where q is the angular distribution relative to the normal axis. The

exponent's p and q vary according to the configuration and di-
mensions of the electrodes.
The measurements of Hara et al. in wire-to-plane geometry [24]
gave p ¼ 4.8 and q z 1.3e1.8 depending on the wire radius and
height. Carreno [25] found, at low heights H ¼ 16 mm of wire from
plane, the same empirical law for the current density where p
varies from 4.20 to 5.98. Zebboudj [16,17] have measured the cur-
rent density and the electric field, with the linear biased probe, at
the passive electrode in a positive DC wire-to-plane system. The
reduced current density J(q)/J(0) and electric field E(q)/E(0) profiles
founded are independent of the applied field magnitude. The
author noticed that both the current density and electric field
distributions for the tested wire radius of 0.10, 0.155, 0.20 and
0.40 mm are identical and he obtained the values of p and q
respectively p ¼ 4.5 and q ¼ 1.75.
The per unit current density J(q)/J(0) and electric field E(q)/E(0)
profiles in the negative DC wire-to-plane system were found to be
independent of the applied field magnitude, as shown in Figs. 12
Fig. 9. The dependence of the negative corona current versus the difference voltage (V and 13 respectively. It can be seen that the current density and

e V0) in log scale for various wire diameters: Hr ¼ 50%; T ¼ 19 C; P ¼ 758 mmHg. electric field distributions are identical for the wire diameters of
0.20, 0.40 and 0.80 mm and we have obtained unique laws from the
positive corona in point-to-plane geometries, but also for both curve-fitting:
polarities in wire-to-planes geometries.

3.3. Distribution of density current and electrical field over the

plane

The probe collector is used to measure the current density J0

when the probe is unbiased (V0 ¼ 0):

I0
J0 ¼ ; (6)
pr2m

Table 1
Results of exponent m for various of wire diameters.

Wire diameters (mm) 0.2 0.4 0.8

mþ 1.55 ± 0.02 1.44 ± 0.02 1.41 ± 0.01

Aþ 1.15 ± 0.02 1.86 ± 0.02 2.63 ± 0.01
m 1.68 ± 0.02 1.57 ± 0.03 1.52 ± 0.02
A 1.99 ± 0.03 2.57 ± 0.01 2.81 ± 0.02
Fig. 10. Current density distribution at the plane for negative corona.
 M. Aissou et al. / Journal of Electrostatics 76 (2015) 108e114 113

JðqÞ ¼ Jð0Þcos4:55 ðqÞ (9)

EðqÞ ¼ Eð0Þcos1:80 ðqÞ (10)

where

q ¼ tan1 ðx=HÞ (11)

4. Conclusion

In this paper, the effect of relative humidity RH on the cur-

rentevoltage characteristics in wire-to-plane has been investigated
experimentally. The measurements have been carried out inside a
plexiglas box in which the RH can be varied. The purpose of this
paper is to report our investigations of corona discharge in
Fig. 11. Electric field distribution at the plane for negative corona. monopolar DC wire-to-plane system, either positive or negative
polarity. The corona discharges were generated in a plasma reactor
between two electrodes. The results will advance the knowledge of
corona discharge where the relative humidity is associated.
The following conclusions are drawn.

1. The presence of relative humidity RH affect the currentevoltage

characteristic for both positive and negative corona discharge.
At a given applied voltage when RH increases, the corona cur-
rent decreases significantly. This is due to the electronegative
nature of water vapor; adding water vapor to air would increase
the attachment coefficient of the mixture, while the ionization
coefficient would be constant. Furthermore, the ion mobility
decreases with the humidity.
2. The wire diameter affects the currentevoltage characteristics. In
fact, the inception voltage V0 increases when 2R increases and
the corona current decrease when 2R increases.
3. The exponent m varies inversely with the change in the diam-
eter of the wire, when the diameter of the wire increases the
exponent m decreases. It can be summarized that the potential
scope for the exponent m falls into a range of 1.4e2.0. The values
of m for the negative corona are always higher than those of the
positive corona for the same wire diameter.
4. The negative values of current density and the electrical field are
Fig. 12. Normal current density at the plane surface.
higher than the positive ones for the same applied voltage. This
is due to the existence of a difference between the positive
inception voltage and the negative one; also the mobility of the
negative ions is higher than that of the positive ions. The
measured and calculated current density J and electric field E
distributions at the passive electrode are similar to those orig-
inally proposed by Warburg. The per unit current density and
electric field are also represented by cosine powers where
p ¼ 4.55 and q ¼ 1.8 respectively.

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