Gaseous pollutant destruction method using self-resonant corona discharge

DETAILED DESCRIPTION The present invention seeks to provide a system and method for remediating fluid borne pollutants that requires significantly less energy than in the past without detracting from its destruction capabilities.
The goal is achieved by connecting a capacitive corona discharge chamber in a resonant circuit with an inductive element.
External energizing pulses are applied to the circuit only as necessary to sustain the generation of corona pulses, with corona pulses between the external signals generated by the self-resonance of the circuit itself.
Various resonant circuit configurations can be used, such as a single corona discharge chamber and inductive element connected in a loop, a ringing circuit between one inductive element and a pair of discharge chambers, and an inductive element connected in parallel with multiple discharge chambers.
The discharge chamber is preferably implemented as a dielectric enclosure with a distributed electrode outside the enclosure and a elongate electrode inside.
The inner electrode, preferably an insulated wire, can either extend along a central axis of the chamber or can be offset from the central axis.
In the latter case the inner electrode preferably extends along an inner wall of the chamber; when the chamber has a polygon shape the inner electrode preferably extends along one of the polygon vertices.
To increase the flow path, multiple corona discharge chambers can be arranged in an array with adjacent flow paths, with the inductive element connected in a resonant circuit with each of the discharge chambers.
Various mechanisms can be used to control the application of energizing pulses to the self-resonant circuit.
These include the supply of energizing signals in response to a sensed termination of corona discharges within the chamber, modulating the energizing signal rate in response to the level of pollution in the fluid stream and, when the discharge chamber is used to remove pollutants from an engine exhaust, varying the energizing signal rate with the engine acceleration