A high-gain, high-voltage pulse generator using sequentially-charged modular multilevel converter sub-modules, for water disinfection applications

Mohamed A. Elgenedy, Ahmed M. Massoud, Shehab Ahmed, Barry W. Williams

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

36 Citations (Scopus)
84 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Modularity, redundancy and scalability are the key features recently sought in High-Voltage (HV) pulse generators for electroporation applications. Such features are gained by utilizing Modular Multilevel Converter (MMC) Sub-Modules (SMs). In this paper, two arms of MMC Half-Bridge SMs (HB-SMs) are utilized for generating bipolar/unipolar HV pulses for disinfection process in water treatment applications. The HB-SM capacitors are charged sequentially from a low voltage dc input source via a resistive-inductive branch and a reverse blocking switch (which is turned ON/OFF at zero voltage/current conditions). The energy losses of the proposed capacitor charging technique are established mathematically as well as the charging time per SM-capacitor. Therefore, the proposed Sequential Pulse Generator (SPG) is able to generate high repetitive pulse rates with high efficiency regardless the HV level of the pulse. Different characterizations of bipolar rectangular pulses can be generated. The proposed topology is assessed by Matlab/Simulink platform and scaled down experimentation. The results establish the viability of the SPG topology for HV pulse generation for water disinfection applications.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1-13
Number of pages13
JournalIEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Power Electronics
Early online date8 Sept 2017
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 8 Sept 2017

Keywords

  • MMA
  • power electronic converter
  • pulse power systems
  • electroporation
  • water treatment
  • water disinfection
  • modular multilevel converter

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