Preliminary analysis of the electrical charge distribution within liquids using PEA

Abstract

Measuring the distribution of the electrical charges in various materials is of great importance for numerous industrial applications. The development of measurement method has been widely studied in the case of dielectric solids. However, for liquids, the development of measurement techniques is not as much established. Liquid materials, as for solid, are used in wide range of industrial applications, such as transformers or electrochemical energy storage. In order to determine the charge distribution within liquid materials, measurement technique used for solids have been adapt to be apply to liquids. The pulsed electro-acoustic (PEA) method has recently been adapted to liquids. It has been applied to various liquids under electrical constraints. Its application to liquids without electrical constraint, with the aim of measuring the natural distribution of electric charges (electrical double layer), is not widely done. This work proposes to apply the PEA method to various liquids without subjecting it to an electrical constraint, in order to assess its capability to measure the electrical double layer. The influence of different parameters on the response is presented and the trends obtained are compared with the trends expected from a theoretical model.