A 1 KW pulsed corona system 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 A-Z switch, one compression stage suffices for the forming of 45 kV, 100 ns pulses across a 120 /spl Omega/ load; the risetime is 20 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, treatment is conducted in heterogeneous media, which proved high removal efficiency. 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 and the corona discharge appearance are presented. The compressor efficiency was found to be approximately 65%, which allowed for air cooling. The experimental results obtained with a dummy resistive load are in fair agreement with the circuit simulation.