Since 1993, elimination of static charges in large mass flows of bulk material has been performed with success in polymer production facilities, under the super-vision of the author, using supersonic injection of charged aerosols, but the physics of this process has never been explained in terms of interaction between the material and the injected charge carriers.In this paper, the basic physics explaining its success is developed. It is shown that the ions released by the carriers form a synthetic plasma. General plasma theory can therefore be applied for understanding the possibilities of the method but also for pointing out its limitations. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.