Supercritical Carbon Dioxide (sCO2)-Cooled Current Source Inverter-based Integrated Motor Drive for MW-scale Electric Aviation Applications

Wide-bandgap enabled current-source inverter (CSI) is a promising power converter topology that has cleaner output voltage waveform, higher fault tolerance, and higher temperature operation capability than conventional voltage-source inverters (VSI). This paper presents a WBG-enabled CSI for a 2-MW integrated motor drive (IMD) for electric aviation application. The CSI system consists of two series-connected CSI that forms as a unit, and three such units are connected in parallel to drive a specially designed surface permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) that has six individual groups of three-phase windings. Furthermore, the CSI’s dc-link inductor and power modules are cooled with supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2), and also cools the integrated PMSM’s stator windings. The proposed CSI-based MW-scale IMD achieves an estimated 97.3% efficiency and 18.1 kW/kg power density. Its high-power density and promising fault-tolerance characteristics make it a competitive solution for MW-scale electric aviation applications.