Design and Implementation of High Efficiency, High Power Density Front-End Converter for High Voltage Capacitor Charger

📄 Project Abstract

Pulse power system has been widely used for medical, industrial and military applications. The operational principle of the pulse power system is that the energy from the input source is stored in the capacitor bank or superconducting inductive device through a dc-dc converter. Then, when a discharging signal exists, the stored energy is released to the load through pulse forming network (PFN) generating high peak power pulse up to gigawatts within several tens of or hundreds of microseconds. The pulse power system originally was developed for the defense application. After the format of the voltage compression and voltage addition stages for the short-pulse high power acceleration had been established, it has been evolved to be common. Then, its application has been extended for food processing, medical equipment sterilization and wastewater treatment since many present environmental problems have been known in the early 70's or even earlier. In addition, the pulse power system is newly spotlighted due to the recent world events. The application examples are to treat anthrax-contaminated mail and to make use of accelerators to produce high power X-rays for security screening.