Half Bridge Boost Converter for Power Quality Improvement in PMBLDCM Drive

This paper aims at the application of a half bridge DC-DC converter as a power factor correction (PFC) converter for a permanent magnet brushless DC motor (PMBLDCM) driven air conditioner. This PFC converter is fed from single-phase AC mains through diode bridge rectifier (DBR) and connected to a voltage source inverter (VSI) feeding the PMBLDCM. The proposed PFC half-bridge converter based PMBLDCM drive is controlled to have the variable speed operation of the compressor for efficiency improvement of the air conditioning system. The control scheme for the PFC converter based PMBLDCM drive is designed, modeled and its simulation is carried out in Matlab-Simulink environment for an air conditioner compressor driven through a 1.5 kW, 1500 rpm PMBLDC motor. The obtained results are presented to validate the effectiveness of the proposed adjustable speed drive in wide range of the speed and an AC input voltage. An improved power quality is observed with almost unity power factor and improved efficiency of the drive in a wide range of the speed and an AC input voltage.