Abatement of NOX using compact high voltage pulse power supply: Towards retrofitting to automobile vehicle

The research work in this paper is based on generation of high voltage pulses using compact power supply sources for abatement of NO
_x
from the diesel engine exhaust. The high voltage source is made up of zero voltage switch cascaded with flyback converter to produce high voltage AC, a Cockroft-Walton voltage multiplier to generate high voltage DC and a rotary spark gap for the production of high voltage pulses of rise time in the range of nano seconds. The rectifier based power supply is validated by a 12 V battery supply. To corroborate the feasibility of proposed methodology in diesel operated vehicles, the experiments are conducted with a 12 V battery. Performance of various shapes of electrodes (cylindrical 5mm diameter, square 5 mm diagonal and hexagonal with vertex to vertex diameter of 5 mm) at different flow rates of 2 l/min, 4 l/min and 6 l/min are also examined.