A high-power pulsed corona source for pollution control applications

The system comprises an all solid-state compact nanosecond pulser and a plasma reactor. The pulser makes use of magnetic compression techniques. Owing to a fast switching at the feed of the HV transformer provided by an ABB GCT switch, one compression stage suffices for the forming of 45-kV, 100-ns pulses across a 120-Ω resistive load at a PRF of up to 1 kHz; the risetime is 15 ns. Plasma reactor is capable of handling both gases and liquids by adding small amounts of atomized water to the gas discharge, in the case of gas, or atomizing polluted liquid itself. In both cases, the treatment is conducted in heterogeneous media. Circuit analysis of compressor and charging system accounting for nonlinear processes in magnetic switches and numerous parasitic parameters is presented. Mechanical and electrical designs are detailed. Typical voltage and current waveforms, volt-ampere characteristics, corona discharge appearance, and light emission characteristics are presented. At operation on a resistive load, the compressor efficiency was found to be approximately 80%, which allowed for air cooling. The experimental results obtained with a resistive load are in fair agreement with the circuit simulation. A novel magnetic compressor circuit improving the coupling to PC discharge is proposed and evaluated.