Matching a Pulsed Power Modulator to a Corona Plasma Reactor

Summary form only given. For large scale, industrial applications of pulsed corona techniques it is important to develop systems having high energy conversion efficiency. From electrical engineering point of view the challenge is to optimize energy transfer from a power modulator to a reactor with a transient impedance. The matching is expressed as the energy transfer efficiency between the modulator and the reactor. For a matched svstem. a maximum amount of the available energy in the power modulator is used to generate the streamer plasma. The criterion for optimal matching between a modulator and a load is that the output impedance of the modulator is equal to the load impedance. When trying to match a plasma reactor to a pulsed power modulator this criterion is difficult to obey since the load impedance changes rapidlv before, during and after plasma generation. To simulate the response of the load as function of the voltage pulse, a simplified equivalent circuit is used. This circuit was used to analyze the matching between the modulator and the load. Measurements will be presented that support and extend the derived model. Based upon the findings, guidelines to optimize the matching between modulator and reactor are derived. By using the gathered information we already succeeded to construct a large average power (10-30 kW), high energy efficient (>90%) pulsed corona plasma system with short (~100 ns) pulses.