Performance improvement of 2.4MJ pulse power supply for electrothermal chemical propulsion research

A 2.4 MJ pulse power system (PPS) has been applied to electrothermal-chemical (ETC) propulsion study for three years successfully. The 2.4 MJ PPS consists of 8 modular capacitor banks (CB) with energy of 300 kJ each. The 300 kJ CB modules are designed to operate independently and have a charging voltage of 22 kV and a current capability of 150 kA. In the course of the application of the PPS, several modifications and improvement have been done in order to enhance safety and reliability. In this paper, we summarized some problems that take place during multiple modules operation and suggested the countermeasures against the problems. The performance of PPS has been improved and we show some experimental results, which we have carried out by an application of the improved 2.4 MJ PPS to various kinds of loads.