Yong-Ho Kim and Sang Hee Hong*

Department of Nuclear Engineering, Seoul National University
Shinrim-dong, Kwanak-ku, Seoul 151-742, Korea
hongsh@plaza.snu.ac.kr

For better understanding of the mechanism of NOx/SOx decompositions by corona discharge in air at atmospheric pressure, information on the self-consistent distributions of electric field strength and its associated chemically active species (CAS), like radicals and charged particles produced by electron collisions with N2, O2 and H20 in air, is essential to find out the final harmless products generated by chemical reactions between CAS and hazardous composites in flue gases. We develop a one-dimensional time-dependent corona discharge model for simulating the parallel-plate or cylinder-wire type reactors. This model consists of Poisson's equation for electric field strength and a set of continuity equations for electron and CAS densities. Electron transport coefficients and reaction coefficients of electron-air interactions, such as ionization, attachment, dissociation, excitation and recombination are calculated by using the Boltzmann equation solver, ELENDIF, and JILA cross-section data. In this numerical work, we have used a direct method for Poisson's equation, a flux corrected transport (FCT) method with a Zalesak's corrector for electron continuity equation, and a 4th-order Runge-Kutta method for CAS continuity equations describing 17 species and 17 reactions respectively. As a result of this numerical modelling, we will present the dependency of the spatial and temporal distributions of CAS densities on the external voltages applied to the discharge reactor.