A Universal Resonant Converter for Equilibrium and Nonequilibrium Plasma Discharges

Abstract

This paper proposes a new system to ignite and to sustain a plasma discharge for different reactor configurations, using a single-series parallel high-frequency resonant converter. The different operation modes are analyzed, and their performance is verified in two applications: an equilibrium plasma discharge (electric arc) and a nonequilibrium plasma discharge (electric barrier at atmospheric pressure) with intensity current and voltage amplitude varying from 135 mA and 1050 V to 600 mA and 502 V, and operating the reactors at 60 Hz, 14 kHz, and 40 kHz. The principal features and results are remarked, such as its ease of adaptation to several regimes of discharge, by simply changing the operational frequency.