Investigation of operational regimes of a high-power pulsed corona source with an all-solid state pulser

This paper reports the ongoing effort of the development of efficient, compact pulsed corona sources for pollution control applications. The systems comprise all-solid state I-kW or 4-kW average-power nanosecond pulsers and a plasma reactor. The former is based on a one-stage magnetic compressor generating 1-5 J, 50-100-ns pulses across a reactor having an impedance of approximately 100 Omega, at a PRF of up to 1 kHz. In the plasma reactor, the treatment is conducted in heterogeneous media. Principle of operation of the compressor is described. Equivalent circuits for two consecutive operation stages of the compressor accounting for nonlinear processes in magnetic switches are presented and analyzed. It was found that for the given topology, the optimal ratio of the primary and secondary capacitances is less than the "classical" unity characteristic for most magnetic compression systems. Typical voltage and current waveforms are presented for an optimal reactor design. It was found that the reactor breakdown voltage decreased considerably with the increase of the pulse repetition frequency (PRF). The latter effect in several cases was clearly associated with ozone build-up.