Patent 7270698 was granted and assigned to Daikin Industries, Ltd. on September, 2007 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
The distance between a discharge electrode and a counter electrode of a discharge device is set to not more than 10 mm such that a streamer discharge is caused between the electrodes. The frequency of sound made by the streamer discharge is raised to 6 kHz or higher to exceed the frequency range which is easily perceivable by human hearing.