Analysis and Experiment on Performance Improvement of IPPS at Low Temperature

The performance of inductive pulsed power supplies (IPPSs) is limited by excessive joule heat loss and low energy transfer efficiency. A significant reduction in the coil resistance can fundamentally ameliorate this problem. This article takes the meat grinder with self-charge capacitor and thyristor (SECT) circuit as an example to study the performance improvement caused by the reduction of the coil resistance. The influence of coil resistance on several performance indexes is analyzed by circuit analysis and simulation. Then, the experiment with an energy level of 40 kJ is carried out, in which the inductors have very low resistance due to immersion in liquid nitrogen. With low temperature, the charging energy and the output current peak value are increased by 37% and 19%, respectively, the pulsewidth of output current is increased by 257%, and the energy transfer capacitor is successfully self-charged compared to the performance of the same SECT circuit with room temperature. Thus, the feasibility of applying nitrogen cooling to IPPS is validated.