The New Soft Starting Methods for Electronics Ballasts of UV Lamps Based on Microcontroller

Based on microcontroller (MCU) controlled half-bridge LCC series-parallel resonant inverters, the triple-frequency harmonics starting method and the double-capacitances starting method were respectively designed for high and middle power electronics ballasts of ultraviolet (UV) lamps. The principle and the experiments were presented and explained in details. The lamp can be ignited by using two mentioned methods without surge current at -40 F to 104 F. Finally, the application ranges, advantages and drawbacks of the two methods were compared. Also, the improved microcontroller programs make those methods more accurate than traditional methods, and the protection features during starting phase are included in the lamp soft-start programme, which can protect ballasts against all of error states during start stage