Characteristics of OH production by O2/H2O pulsed dielectric barrier discharge

We studied characteristics of OH production by pulsed dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) with O-2/H2O gas mixtures. We found that the light emission from the O-2/H2O DBD was due to OH (A-X) transition. Therefore, it is allowed to measure the spatial distribution and the intensity of OH (A X) by simply direct photography of discharge image. The OH (A X) intensity became weaker approaching the dielectric barriers and away from the electrodes along the direction of the axis of and the surface of the electrodes, respectively. Regardless of the specific operating parameters, the intensity of OH (A-X) linearly increased with discharge power. At a similar level of the discharge power, increasing the applied voltage was most effective for the OH production. In addition, we found that the production of OH radical could be enhanced by increasing O(1D) radical. Our study not only introduced a simple method for the semi quantification of OH (A-X) in the O-2/H2O DBD, but also suggested a way for the optimization of OH production in a plasma process. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.