Targeted-waveform optimisation for ozonising dielectric barrier discharge reactors

In this work, a method for maximizing the efficacy of ozone production by dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) is presented. By developing an optimiser-based hardware-in-the-loop system, the effects of varying input waveform parameters and the flowrate of the input gas on the reactor conditions could be explored with greater fidelity than in previous literature. The waveform used is biharmonic, consisting of the sum of two sine waves and allowing a greater number of explorable parameters. The performance of the reactor, evaluated using the parametric sweep technique, is compared to that of a hybrid optimiser combining particle swarm optimisation and pattern search. Two metrics were targeted: ozone concentration-to-power ratio (ppm/W) and ozone quantity for a given energy (g/kWh). Thus, the characteristics of the input voltage waveform and flowrate were adjusted to target high ozone generation efficacy for the reactor used in the experiment. Results show that the optimiser achieves 343 ppm/W compared to 170 ppm/W for the parametric sweep, using a similar number of measurements.