Large-scale ion generation for precipitation of atmospheric aerosols

Ma, Shaoxiang; Cheng, He; Li, Jiacheng; Xu, Maoyuan; Liu, Dawei; Ostrikov, Kostya

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-11717-2020

Articles | Volume 20, issue 20

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-11717-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-11717-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 20, issue 20

Research article

|

16 Oct 2020

Research article |

| 16 Oct 2020

Large-scale ion generation for precipitation of atmospheric aerosols

Shaoxiang Ma, He Cheng, Jiacheng Li, Maoyuan Xu, Dawei Liu, and Kostya Ostrikov

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Final revised paper (published on 16 Oct 2020)
Preprint (discussion started on 24 Apr 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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SC1: 'Figure 1(e) only shows 45 corona discharge points on the 1m long wire electrode. How did author estimate the large corona discharge system has 300,000 discharge points?', James Wilson, 29 Apr 2020
- AC1: 'Reply to short comment 1 by James Wilson', Dawei Liu, 08 May 2020
SC2: 'SC', Cherry Lee, 02 May 2020
- AC2: 'Reply to short comment 2 by Cherry Lee', Dawei Liu, 08 May 2020
SC3: 'measurement of ions generated and relationship between indoor and outdoor sources', YanZhe Zhang, 08 May 2020
- AC3: 'Answer to SC 3', Dawei Liu, 21 May 2020
SC4: 'Large-scale ion generation for precipitation of atmospheric aerosols', Xin Lu, 08 May 2020
- AC4: 'Answer to SC 4', Dawei Liu, 21 May 2020
RC1: 'Large-scale ion generation for precipitation of atmospheric aerosols', Liang Zhang, 08 May 2020
- AC6: 'Answer to RC1', Dawei Liu, 25 May 2020
SC5: 'This paper provides an interesting study on the new application of large corona discharge system. What are the obstacles for the running of this huge corona discharge system on the high mountain peaks? and how to keep the discharge system operating stably', Yuantao Zhang, 10 May 2020
- AC5: 'Answer to SC 5', Dawei Liu, 21 May 2020
RC2: 'My suggestion', Anonymous Referee #1, 24 Jun 2020

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by Anna Wenzel on behalf of the Authors (29 Jun 2020) Author's response

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (01 Jul 2020) by Fangqun Yu

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (11 Jul 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

My suggestions for the revisions are listed here:

The eddy diffusion K and decay constant λ were described with more details, however, it should be explicitly shown if they are constants or they vary with factors such as voltage, wind speed, humidity, temperature and pressure.

The steady-2D equation (1) seems not complex, and the results in Fig. 4 and Fig. 7 seems regular, thus I guess there may exist an analytic solution of ion density for varying wind speeds and voltages, at least along the x-axis. Is it possible to reach such a result in the further?

In comparison with the single-discharge-point results of simulation and indoor experiment in Fig. 5, I prefer to see the relevant multi-discharge-point results, which is more realistic.

In page 9: “the whole coverage volume was approximately 30m*20m*90m”. Firstly, how the width of 90m was obtained? as in Fig. 1(b) the distance between two poles is only 60m. Secondly, according to Fig. 6(d), the superimposed ion density decays at the boundary, what is the length of boundary? should it be taken away from the width of 90m?

Although the coverage of ion density in Fig. 6(b) is coincident with that in Fig. 6(a), the ion density in Fig. 6(a) ranges between 10^6 and 10^5 at the distance of 20m~30m, while in Fig. 6(b) it is less with about one order of magnitude, ranging between 10^5 and 10^4. Please discuss where the difference results from and how to improve it.
Besides, the x-ticks in Fig. 6(a) seems to be not in line with the x-names.

The results in Fig. 8 support that the ion density in the region of 30m-35m in Fig. 6(a) contributes to precipitation, however, the minimum of ion density which can enhance settling should be obtained in order to estimate the largest effective distance in Fig. 6(a).

The authors should carefully check the values, units, references (a lot errors), figures (obscures seen in printout) in the paper one by one, to avoid unnecessary mistakes.

Some of above suggestions maybe beyond the scope of this paper, it is preferable to add a section to discuss further works to make the paper more coherent.

Referee Report: PDF

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (13 Jul 2020) by Fangqun Yu

AR by Dawei Liu on behalf of the Authors (18 Jul 2020) Author's response

ED: Publish as is (28 Jul 2020) by Fangqun Yu

Short summary

Our work suggests that a large corona discharge system is an efficient and possibly economically sustainable way to increase the ion density in the open air and control the precipitation of atmospheric aerosols. Once the system is installed on a mountaintop, it will generate lots of charged nuclei, which may trigger water precipitation or fog elimination within a certain region in the downwind directions.