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Corona Discharge Surface Treater Without High Voltage Transformer

Article  in  IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics · April 2008

DOI: 10.1109/TPEL.2007.915760 · Source: IEEE Xplore

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 23, NO. 2, MARCH 2008 993

Corona Discharge Surface Treater Without

High Voltage Transformer
Nándor Burány, László Huber, Member, IEEE, and Predrag Pejović, Member, IEEE

Abstract—A corona discharge generator for surface treatment

without the use of a step-up transformer with a high-voltage
secondary is presented. The oil bath for high-voltage components
is eliminated and still a reasonable volume, efficiency, and relia-
bility of the generator are obtained. The voltage multiplication is
achieved by an LC series resonant circuit. The resonant circuit is
driven by a bridge type voltage-source resonant inverter. First, fea-
sibility of the proposed method is proved by calculations. Closed
form design expressions for key components of the electronic
generator are provided. Second, a prototype of the electronic
generator is built and efficiency measurements are performed.
For power measurement, Lissajous figures and direct averaging
of the instantaneous voltage-current product are used. The overall
efficiency achieved is in the range between 80% and 90%.
Index Terms—Surface treatment, corona, gas discharges, high-
voltage technique, resonant power conversion.

I. INTRODUCTION

REATMENT of polyethylene and other film surfaces is nec-

T essary to render their affinity to inks, glues, and other coat-
ings. A widely accepted treatment method is by corona discharge.
The quality of the corona discharge is measured by the surface-
tension energy. The goal is to increase the film’s surface tension
energy, which is naturally lower than the surface tension energy
of a liquid [1]. Corona discharge is produced by applying a high-
voltage, high-frequency signal to an electrode separated from a
grounded plane by an air gap and a buffer dielectric. Modern
corona generators produce sinusoidal voltages up to 20 kV peak,
with a frequency in the range of 20 to 40 kHz [1]. Fig. 1. Different high-frequency voltage multiplication methods: (a) using only
The high-voltage, high-frequency generator basically consists a step-up transformer with a high-voltage secondary, (b) combining a step-up
of a high-frequency voltage source producing a low or medium transformer and an LC resonant circuit, (c) using only an LC resonant circuit.
voltage and of a high-frequency voltage multiplier. The high-fre-
quency voltage multiplication presents a challenging task. voltage multiplication, the transformer provides isolation of the
The voltage multiplier can be implemented by three different corona treater from the supplying network. However, the design
methods as shown in Fig. 1. First, by using only a step-up trans- and implementation of the high-frequency step-up transformer
former; second, by combining a step-up transformer with an LC is difficult. Special oversized ferrite cores have to be used to
resonant circuit; and, third, by using only an LC resonant circuit. obtain large creepage distances required by the high voltages.
The first method [2]–[6], shown in Fig. 1(a), is widely ac- Similarly, windings with large number of turns and large wire
cepted because a single component, i.e., a step-up transformer cross-section area are necessary due to the high reactive power
with a high-voltage secondary, can do all the work. Besides the oscillating in the transformer. Usually, an oil bath is used for the
transformer to improve isolation and heath transfer.
Manuscript received April 27, 2007; revised July 17, 2007. Recommended
A step-up transformer can be combined with an LC resonant
for publication by Associate Editor T. Lebey. circuit [7]–[9] as shown in Fig. 1(b). In [7], a moderate voltage
N. Burány is with Technical Engineering College, Subotica, Serbia (e-mail: boost is obtained by a medium-voltage transformer and further
bnandor@nadlanu.com).
L. Huber is with the Power Electronics Laboratory, Delta Products Corpora-
voltage multiplication is achieved by an LC resonant circuit.
tion, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709 USA (e-mail: huber@delta-corp.com). This way, the transformer is simplified but a new problem is en-
P. Pejović is with the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Bel- countered: the voltage transfer function of this combination is
grade, Belgrade, Serbia (e-mail: peja@etf.bg.ac.yu). of fourth order. In fact, the transformer leakage inductance and
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. interwinding capacitance create two more poles in addition to
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPEL.2007.915760 the poles of the LC resonant circuit [9]. By increasing the turns
0885-8993/$25.00 © 2008 IEEE
994 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 23, NO. 2, MARCH 2008

ratio of the transformer, the frequency of the additional poles de-

creases and their impact becomes more significant. The fourth-
order characteristic introduces transients in the primary current
waveform, causing increased switching losses and synchroniza-
tion problems in the control circuit. By arranging the resonant
components with respect to the high-voltage transformer as pro-
posed in [8] and [9], i.e., by merging the leakage inductance
and the interwinding capacitance of the transformer respectively
with the resonant inductance and the resonant capacitance, the
second-order characteristic of the corona power system can be
preserved, but the transformer still needs to handle large reac-
tive power and high voltage similarly as in the first method.
The third method, high-frequency voltage multiplication by
using only an LC resonant circuit, shown in Fig. 1(c), has not
been proposed yet for the corona treaters. The objective of this
paper is to show the viability of this method for corona supplies.
Applications of the voltage multiplication by using only an
LC resonant circuit for other types of loads are reported in
[10]–[12]. In [10], a high-voltage power supply for an atmo-
spheric pressure plasma source as load is described. A special
implementation of the LC voltage multiplication in a simple
RLC series resonant circuit by using high-Tc superconducting
wire for the inductor is presented in [11]. In [12], a very
high voltage gain, relatively insensitive to the load circuit, is
achieved by employing the concept of the resonance trans-
former, which uses a set of resonant circuits. Compared to the
simple LC voltage multiplication circuit, the solution proposed
in [12] has a higher LC component count and, therefore, an
increased reactive power.
By implementing the voltage multiplication by using only
an LC resonant circuit, the transformer can be completely
eliminated. However, if isolation of the generator output from
the input voltage source is required, a low-voltage transformer
with 1:1 turns ratio can be used. The low-voltage transformer
does not introduce significant additional poles. Therefore, the
second-order characteristic of the voltage multiplication circuit
is preserved.
To prove the viability of the proposed method, a prototype
generator for corona treater is built for 1-kW input power, single
phase 230-V rms, 50-Hz input voltage and 9-kV rms output
voltage. The operating frequency is 30 kHz. For output power
measurement, Lissajous figures and direct averaging of the in-
stantaneous voltage-current product are used. The overall effi-
ciency achieved is in the range between 80% and 90%.
The paper is organized as follows. In Section II, the circuit
topology and principles of operation are described. In Sec-
tion III, basic design expressions are derived. Implementation
of key components of the prototype circuit is described in
Section IV. Experimental verification of the proposed circuit is
provided in Section V.
II. FUNDAMENTALS
A. Topology
The power circuit topology of the proposed corona discharge
generator is shown in Fig. 2. Basically, this is a class D voltage-
source parallel resonant inverter [13]. The input voltage of the
Fig. 2. Circuit diagram of the proposed corona discharge generator.
Fig. 3. Equivalent circuit of the corona discharge load: a) model with parasitic
capacitances and a spark gap [2], [8], b) the same with modeling the losses in
the spark gap [2], [4].
full-bridge inverter consisting of MOSFETs is supplied
by the bridge rectifier DB and the dc link capacitor .
The full-bridge inverter supplies a square-wave voltage to
the power transformer with 1:1 turns ratio. The role of the
transformer is to isolate the corona load from the mains. In this
configuration, the transformer operates almost as an ideal trans-
former. Resonant effects due to parasitic inductances and capac-
itances are minimized by tightly winding the transformer wind-
ings on a toroidal ferrite core.
Voltage multiplication is obtained by the resonant circuit
. The corona load is connected in parallel to resonant capac-
itor .
B. Modeling of Corona Load
The corona load current is drawn from the high-voltage gen-
erator in narrow pulses. However, as the corona load current is
drawn from the output capacitor of the generator, the narrow
current pulses are averaged. Therefore, for the analysis and de-
sign of the voltage multiplier circuit, an averaged model of the
corona load can be used. The equivalent circuit of the corona
load is shown in Fig. 3, [2], [4], and [8].
In Fig. 3, represents the capacitance between the metal
electrode and the buffer dielectric, whereas, represents the
capacitance of the dielectric layer. The capacitance values are
variable in dependence of the dimensions of the treater station.
Capacitance is typically around 100 pF and it is usually
much smaller than capacitance , which has a larger value due
to the high permittivity of the dielectric material.
The corona load current is caused by discharges through the
air between the metal electrode and the dielectric. This process
is modeled by the spark gap in parallel to , as shown in
Fig. 3(a). As the discharge rate depends on the instantaneous
voltage, the spark gap can be modeled with a series connection
BURÁNY et al.: CORONA DISCHARGE SURFACE TREATER 995

Fig. 4. Equivalent resonant circuit for the analysis of voltage multiplication.

of Zener diodes as shown in Fig. 3(b), [2], [4] or with a voltage

dependent resistor as recommended in [6].
In this paper, in the analysis and design of the LC resonant
circuit, the corona load is modeled with a simple linear resistor.
In fact, nonlinearities distort the voltage and current waveforms
of the corona load; however, their effect on the power circuit
design can be, generally, neglected as the load current is much
smaller than the resonant inductor and capacitor currents [13].
The value of the linear resistance is selected in such a way to
obtain the same power level as with the actual corona load. As
the operating voltage and the rated power of the actual treater
station were around 9 kVrms and 1 kW, respectively, the equiv- Fig. 5. Simulated input and output voltage waveforms for the resonant circuit
alent linear resistance of the corona load is selected as 80 k . in Fig. 4 with a) sinusoidal and b) square-wave input voltage (L = 11 mH,
To take into account the difference in resonant frequencies of C = 2:5 nF, and R = 80 k ! ).
the generator with and without load, a parasitic capacitance in
the range of 100 pF is added in parallel to the load resistor.
build-up process). The magnitude of the input-output voltage
transfer function for sinusoidal input voltage is obtained as
C. Theory of Operation

As mentioned in Section II.A, the overall topology of the pro-

posed corona generator, Fig. 2, is a class D parallel resonant in-
verter. The diagonal pairs of the MOSFETs in Fig. 2 are driven
by non-overlapping pulse trains with duty cycles slightly less
than 50%. Transformer supplies a square wave voltage to the (2)
input of the resonant circuit with the corona load.
For the analysis of operation, especially the voltage multipli-
cation, the series resonant circuit loaded by a resistor in parallel
to the resonant capacitor as shown in Fig. 4 is used. where
After power-up, the output voltage increases following the
differential equation: (3)

(1) is the undamped natural frequency, and

The increase of the output voltage is illustrated with sim- (4)

ulation waveforms in Fig. 5. The input and output voltage
waveforms in Fig. 5(a) and (b) are obtained for sinusoidal is the loaded quality factor at . For square-wave input
and square-wave input voltages, respectively. In both cases, voltage, the rms value of the fundamental component of the
the output voltage has a sinusoidal waveform with increasing input voltage is obtained by multiplying the amplitude of the
amplitude. The capacitor current, load current, and inductor square wave voltage by . The voltage multiplica-
current are also sinusoidal for the sinusoidal input voltage, tion factor in (2) has a maximum value at frequency
and very close to sinusoidal for the square-wave input voltage.
It should be noted that the amplitude of the sinusoidal input (5)
voltage is chosen to be equal to the amplitude of the funda-
mental component of the square-wave input voltage in order to
obtain equal output voltage amplitudes in both cases. It should The maximum value of the voltage multiplication factor is
be also noted that resonant circuit losses are neglected.
The voltage multiplication factor can be calculated by solving (6)
the circuit in Fig. 4 in steady state (after saturation of the voltage
996 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 23, NO. 2, MARCH 2008


Fig. 6. Model of voltage-multiplication circuit in Fig. 4 at resonant frequency
for Q 1.
Fig. 8. Waveforms of the input voltage and inductor current of resonant circuit
in Fig. 4 for ideal synchronization (unity power factor).

ductor current sign. For ideal synchronization, the waveforms

of the input voltage and inductor current of the resonant circuit
in Fig. 4 are shown in Fig. 8. It should be noted that an accu-
rate tracking of the resonant frequency at high is essential
to obtain maximal voltage multiplication and maximum output
power.
If operation at a lower output power is necessary due to, for
example, a reduced treatment width or speed, the frequency
Fig. 7. Block diagram of the control circuit.
of the VCO is shifted above resonance. For this purpose, the
error amplifier (EA) compares the bridge input current with a
For , what is the characteristic of typical corona given reference and overrides the phase detector output signal.
loads, and . As the dc link voltage is approximately constant, by regulating
The input impedance seen by the voltage source in Fig. 4 the bridge input current, an acceptable regulation of the output
is obtained as power is obtained.
An improved regulation can be achieved if a rectifier with
power factor correction (PFC) [14], [15] is employed for the
stabilization of the dc link voltage. To improve regulation, an
other technique is used in [16] by including a four quadrant
multiplier in the feedback path.
(7)
III. DESIGN
At the resonant frequency , by using (4), the input The design goal is to transfer a given average power through
impedance is determined as the voltage multiplier to the corona load at a given frequency.
For the design of the power circuit, it is enough to analyze the
loaded resonant circuit at frequency defined in (5) or at unity
(8) power factor, which happens also near [13]. At high
values, and , as shown in Section II.C.
For , the imaginary part of the input impedance is In other operating points, the currents, voltages, and losses are
and the input impedance is purely resistive, i.e., lower; therefore, a thorough analysis for a successful design is
not necessary [13]. After selecting the operating frequency and
(9) determining the loaded quality factor at the rated power, the
key design parameters are the resonant inductance and the
Therefore, at the resonant frequency, the voltage-multiplica- resonant capacitance .
tion circuit in Fig. 4 can be modeled with an ideal transformer The average power delivered to the corona load in Fig. 4 is
as shown in Fig. 6. It should be noted that for a square-wave
input voltage, the simple model in Fig. 6 is truly valid only at (10)
the fundamental component.
To obtain the desired power at resonance, the maximal
D. Control Circuit voltage multiplication factor defined in (4) has to be equal
The block diagram of the control circuit is shown in Fig. 7. to
The control circuit generates the drive signals for MOSFETs
in Fig. 2. The frequency of the drive signals is de- (11)
termined by the voltage controlled oscillator (VCO). The duty
cycle of the VCO pulses is 50%. where, for the square-wave input from Fig. 8,
The VCO is synchronized to the resonant circuit through the
phase detector and the current comparator, which detects the in- (12)
BURÁNY et al.: CORONA DISCHARGE SURFACE TREATER
As the maximum value of the voltage multiplication factor
at high values is equal to , combining (10), (11),
and (12), it follows that:
(13)
The resonant capacitance can be determined from the calcu-
lated value of through the definition expression for , (4)
(14)
The actual resonant capacitance has to be slightly lower than
the value obtained in (14) due to the parasitic capacitance of the
corona load.
The resonant inductance can be determined from (3) and (14),
i.e.,
(15)
The current of the resonant inductor is equal to the vecto-
rial sum of the resonant capacitor current and the corona load
current. At high values, the load current can be neglected,
which results in
(16)
The final expression for the inductor current follows from
(10), (14), and (16) as
(17)
It should be noted that expression (17) can be also derived by
simply equating the averaged product of the current and voltage
waveforms in Fig. 8 with the average corona power, i.e.,
(18)
IV. IMPLEMENTATION
To verify the design procedure and prove the viability of the
proposed voltage multiplication method, a prototype generator
for a corona load is built for 1-kW input power, single-phase
230-V rms, 50-Hz input voltage, and 9-kV rms output voltage.
The operating frequency is 30 kHz, which is in the middle of the
frequency range of the modern generators (20–40 kHz [1]). The
equivalent resistance of the corona load is 80 k as obtained in
Subsection II.B. The amplitude of the square-wave input voltage
of the resonant circuit is V, which is obtained after
rectifying the 230-V rms line voltage and taking into account
the voltage ripple on the dc-link capacitor and the voltage drops
on the MOSFETs and the transformer. Implementation of key
components is described in the following subsections.
A. Resonant Capacitor
Although the LC resonant circuit for the voltage multiplica-
tion could be implemented by using only the parasitic capaci-
tance of the corona load and an external inductor, which would
result in a minimal reactive power oscillating in the resonant
997
circuit, the resonant frequency would be too high because of the
small value of the parasitic capacitance of the corona load. In
fact, calculating with a typical value of the parasitic capacitance
of the corona load around 100 pF, it follows from (4) and (13)
that the resonant frequency would be around 700 kHz, which is
impractical for the resonant inverter with MOSFETs. Another
problem is that the parasitic capacitance of the corona load is
variable. Minor changes in the corona electrode system would
lead to significant changes in the operating frequency and output
power. Changes in the operating frequency are undesirable from
the point of view of the control circuit, whereas, changes in the
output power would vary the quality of the surface treatment
[1]. Therefore, to stabilize the operating frequency, an external
resonant capacitor needs to be added in parallel to the corona
load. The desired value of the resonant capacitance, obtained
from (14), is nF.
The rms operating voltage of the resonant capacitor is equal to
kV. It is difficult to find capacitors with such a high rated
voltage. Therefore, the resonant capacitor is implemented by
a series connection of medium-voltage, low-loss block capaci-
tors. In fact, fifteen film polypropylene capacitors of 33-nF nom-
inal capacitance and 2000-Vdc/700-Vac rated voltage are con-
nected in series, resulting in an equivalent capacitance of 2.2 nF.
The remaining part of the capacitance up to nF is
supplied by the treater station. If there is a proper voltage bal-
ance between the capacitors, the series connection can prop-
erly support the required operating voltage. In fact, by equal
voltage distribution, the voltage of each capacitor is equal to
9 kV/15 Vrms. The voltage distribution can be improved
by placing balancing resistors in parallel with the capacitors,
similarly as in the dc circuits. In the experimental circuit, close
to equal voltage distribution is achieved even without the bal-
ancing resistors.
B. Resonant Inductor
The calculated value of the resonant inductance obtained
from (15) is mH. The inductor rms current from (17)
is A. The inductor rms voltage is approximately
equal to 9 kV, i.e., the output voltage of the resonant circuit
because of the high-voltage multiplication factor. Similarly to
the resonant capacitor, the resonant inductor is implemented by
a series connection of medium-voltage inductors.
Implementations with and without magnetic cores were con-
sidered. Although implementation with magnetic cores provides
a better efficiency, the inductor is implemented without mag-
netic cores because of cost concerns due to the large number of
cores.
Three resonant inductors were built. Each inductor is divided
into 45 segments. By dividing into 45 segments, the rms voltage
on each segment is around 200 V, which is appropriate for enam-
eled copper wire without additional interlayer insulation. Plain
spiral windings of 10 turns with internal diameter mm
and outer diameter mm are made and lined up on the
same axis. The construction of a resonant inductor is shown in
Fig. 9. As a result of the magnetic coupling between the indi-
vidual segments, the total inductance is much higher than the in-
ductance of an individual segment multiplied by the number of
segments. The inductance of a single segment is around 29 H,
998
TABLE I
INDUCTOR PARAMETERS
Fig. 9. Construction of the segmented air-core inductor (Cross-section view).
Fig. 10. Dependence of total inductance on the number of inductor segments.
whereas, the total inductance of 45 segments is 11.3 mH, i.e.,
almost nine times higher than 45 29 mH.
It should be noted that the measured value of the resonant
inductance is slightly smaller than the calculated value. In fact,
the design equations in Section III were derived by neglecting
the losses of the resonant circuit; therefore, a minor adjustment
of the resonant inductance value is necessary in order to obtain
the nominal input power of 1 kW.
The dependence of the total inductance on the number of seg-
ments is shown in Fig. 10. It can be concluded from Fig. 10 that
the total inductance approximately linearly increases when the
number of segments is greater than 18.
Key parameters of the three implementations of the resonant
inductor are summarized in Table I. It should be noted in Table I
that in each implementation of the resonant inductor, the total
wire cross-section area is approximately the same, resulting in
the same current density around 3.6 A/mm . The best results
are obtained with the third implementation of the resonant in-
ductor (Coil 3), which is made by twisting 21 magnetic wires of
0.26-mm diameter. As shown in Table I, the temperature rise of
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 23, NO. 2, MARCH 2008
Coil 3 in the open air at full load is the smallest and equal 20 C.
As a result, there is no need for an oil bath. It should be also
noted in Table I that the first implementation of the resonant in-
ductor (Coil 1) failed because there was a tendency of thermal
runaway caused by excessive eddy current losses [17].
In Table I, the resistance at 30 kHz is obtained by measuring
the impedance of the unloaded LC series resonant circuit at res-
onance. Finally, it should be noted in Table I that Coil 3 with a
single wire diameter equal to 0.68 of the skin depth at 30 kHz
has almost two times lower resistance at resonance than Coil 2
with a single wire diameter equal to 1.18 of the skin depth at
30 kHz.
C. Transformer
The transformer in the proposed corona generator has 1:1
turns ratio. The effects of the parasitic inductances and capaci-
tances are minimized by tightly winding the transformer wind-
ings on a toroidal ferrite core. A standard
toroidal core from Epcos is used. The primary and secondary
windings of the transformer are implemented with 60 turns of
7 0.45 mm twisted wire, occupying the whole circumference
of the core. The maximum flux density is
(19)
The temperature rise of the transformer winding at full load
is around 20 C.
V. EXPERIMENTAL VERIFICATION
A. Corona Reactor
The corona reactor used for the prototype testing was a two-
roller station with 1-m long rollers each of 80-mm diameter.
The dielectric layer covering the rollers was silicon rubber of
2.5-mm depth and with a relative permittivity . Multi-
blade bare metal electrodes were used. The gap between the
electrodes and the roller was about 1.5 mm, but gap variations
in the range mm were experienced due to mechanical im-
perfections. The discharge was of open air type.
B. Generator Start-Up
The measured output voltage waveform during start-up is
shown in Fig. 11. It increases from zero to a steady-state level
BURÁNY et al.: CORONA DISCHARGE SURFACE TREATER 999

Fig. 12. Experimental setup for the corona discharge power measurement by
Lissajous figures.

capacitor nF in series with resonant capacitor .

The change in the resonant frequency because of this series con-
nection is negligible. The integration of the corona current is
performed by capacitor nF connected in series with
Fig. 11. Measured output voltage waveform during start-up [4 kV/div]. the corona load. The value of capacitance is chosen so that
the voltage across is negligible compared to the corona dis-
charge voltage.
of 9 kV rms similarly as the simulated output voltage waveform The Lissajous figure is obtained by applying the voltages
in Fig. 5. The operating frequency is close to the desired value across capacitors and , denoted in Fig. 12 as and ,
of 30 kHz. respectively, to the X and Y inputs of an oscilloscope operating
The only difference between the simulated waveforms in in the XY mode. The area enclosed by the Lissajous figure is
Fig. 5 and the experimental waveform in Fig. 11 is the start-up proportional to the energy put into the corona discharge during
time. The output voltage of the experimental circuit increases one period of operation. More specifically, as is the integral
to 90% of its steady state value during seven to eight cycles of the corona current, i.e.,
of the driving voltage, whereas, the simulated output voltage
increases approximately three times slower. The difference in (20)
the start-up time is the result of modeling the corona load with
a linear resistor as shown in Fig. 4, which is appropriate only where is the corona charge, the area enclosed by the Lissajous
in the steady state. During start-up, the resonant LC circuit in figure is obtained as
Fig. 4 is practically unloaded until the ignition of the corona
discharge. As the corona ignites only when the voltage is close
to the steady-state value, the build-up of the output voltage in
the experimental circuit is faster.

C. Measurement Methods of Corona Power (21)

Direct measurement of the power transmitted to the corona

Taking into account that voltage is the scaled down ver-
load with a standard wattmeter is coupled with many difficul-
sion of load voltage , i.e., , the area enclosed by
ties. First, the voltage is too high, second, the current is too low,
the Lissajous figure is
third, the power factor is too low, and fourth, the frequency is
too high for a standard wattmeter. An additional difficulty is that
the corona current is non-sinusoidal with significant high-fre-
quency pulses. Therefore, the corona discharge power is mea- (22)
sured by an indirect method based on the Lissajous figures [2],
[4], and [8]. This method is advantageous because of the inte- It directly follows from (22) that the corona discharge power
gration of the highly noisy corona current. As a result, the high is determined as
frequency components, otherwise disturbing the measurement,
are suppressed. For a verification purpose, the corona power is (23)
also measured by averaging the corona voltage-current product.
Measurement of input power is performed by a standard elec- Finally, the measured voltage vectors and are trans-
trodynamic wattmeter. ferred to a PC and the corona discharge power is calculated by
The experimental setup for the corona discharge power mea- using an integrating Matlab routine.
surement by Lissajous figures is shown in Fig. 12. To avoid The experimental setup for the corona power measurement by
working with high voltages, the load voltage is divided by a averaging the corona voltage-current product is almost the same
factor of 200. The voltage division is achieved by connecting as that for the Lissajous figures in Fig. 12. The only difference
1000 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 23, NO. 2, MARCH 2008

Fig. 13. Typical v (t) and v (t) waveforms obtained by measuring the
corona discharge power by the Lissajous method. Fig. 14. Lissajous figure corresponding to Fig. 13.

is that instead of capacitor , a resistor is used.

For this case, the corona discharge power is obtained as

(24)

Again, the measured voltage vectors and are trans-

ferred to a PC and the corona discharge power is calculated by
using a multiplying/averaging Matlab routine.

D. Efficiency Measurements
The input power of the generator is measured by a standard
analog wattmeter (Iskra EL0120). By minor changes in the input
voltage, the input power is adjusted to kW.
The output power is measured first by the Lissajous method.
Typical and waveforms are shown in Fig. 13. The
slightly lower amplitude and distorted sinusoid represents the
integral of the corona current, , whereas, the almost ideal
sinusoid is the scaled corona voltage, . The corresponding
Lissajous figure is shown in Fig. 14.
By calculating the area enclosed by the Lissajous figure in
Fig. 14, the measured corona discharge power is W.
Finally, the efficiency is obtained as
% (25)
The measured corona voltage and current waveforms, corre-
sponding to Fig. 12, are presented in Fig. 15. By calculating
the average of the corona voltage-current products in Fig. 15,
the corona discharge power is determined as W.
This result is very close to the result obtained by the Lissajous
method. For comparison, the obtained efficiency with the pro-
posed corona generator is significantly higher than the efficiency
obtained in [8] with a traditional high-voltage step-up trans-
former, i.e., 74%.
Distribution of power losses is summarized in Table II. The
main source of the power losses is the resonant inductor. The
Fig. 15. Measured corona voltage and current waveforms. It should be noted
that the amplitude of thepmeasured voltage is 64 V, which corresponds to 9 kV
rms corona voltage, i.e., 2 1 9 kV=200 = 64 V. The asymmetry in the current
waveform is due to polarity effect [4].
losses of the resonant inductor are estimated by measuring the
temperature rise of the inductor winding. In fact, during contin-
uous operation at nominal input power, i.e., 1 kW, the temper-
ature of the inductor winding is measured. Then, the inductor
is connected to a dc power source and the source voltage is
adjusted to obtain the same temperature rise of the inductor
winding as that during regular operation. The power supplied
by the dc source represents the loss of the resonant inductor.
The losses of the transformer are estimated similarly as the
inductor losses. The primary and the secondary winding of the
transformer were connected in series when the dc source sup-
plied the power.
The losses of the resonant capacitor and the MOSFETs are
calculated by using the equivalent series resistance (ESR) of the
capacitor and the drain-source resistance of the MOS-
BURÁNY et al.: CORONA DISCHARGE SURFACE TREATER
TABLE II
DISTRIBUTION OF POWER LOSSES
FETs, respectively. The switching losses of the MOSFETs are
low due to the operation above resonance.
The corona discharge power measurements presented in
Figs. 13–15 were obtained with the prototype circuit where the
resonant inductor was implemented with Coil 2.
The measured corona discharge power exhibits significant
variations (approximately %) from cycle to cycle of the res-
onant period, which is the result of the relatively large (10%)
100-Hz voltage ripple on the dc bus capacitor ( in Fig. 2),
variations in the air gap ( mm) of the corona electrode
system, and the natural disturbances of the corona discharge
which is a stochastic phenomenon. In fact, following (10) and
(11), even larger variations of the corona discharge power would
be expected. However, due to the regulation circuit (Fig. 7), the
power variations are reduced to approximately 5%. To improve
the measurement accuracy, a large number of measurements
should be performed and, then, the corona power is calculated
by averaging the individual power measurements.
The efficiency of the proposed corona discharge generator
can be further improved by increasing the dc link voltage. In
fact, it follows from (17) that the inductor current is inversely
proportional to the dc link voltage , whereas, the resonant in-
ductance is linearly proportional to , as it follows from (15).
Therefore, the reactive power of the inductor, i.e.,
is inversely proportional to . As a result, the circulating re-
active-power loss is reduced and the efficiency of the generator
is increased. At the same time, the resonant capacitance is also
reduced, as it follows from (14).
The dc link voltage can be increased by using a conventional
power factor correction (PFC) circuit [14], [15]. For example,
by increasing the dc link voltage to 400 V from the current 280
V, the inductor current and its reactive power will be reduced by
30%. Finally, it should be noted that by employing a voltage-
doubler PFC circuit as described in [14], a further efficiency
improvement is possible.
VI. CONCLUSION
A corona discharge generator for surface treatment is pro-
posed without the use of a step-up transformer with a high-
voltage secondary. The voltage multiplication is achieved by
using only an LC series resonant circuit. Advantages of the pro-
posed method compared to other known methods are analyzed.
Closed-form design expressions for the key components of the
proposed generator are provided.
1001
To prove the viability of the proposed method, a prototype
generator was built for 1-kW input power, single-phase 230-V
rms, 50-Hz input voltage, and 9-kV rms output voltage. The op-
erating frequency is 30 kHz. Implementation of the key compo-
nents of the prototype generator is provided. For output power
measurement, Lissajous figures and direct averaging of the in-
stantaneous voltage-current product are used. The overall effi-
ciency achieved is in the range between 80% and 90%, which is
higher than the efficiency of the conventional corona discharge
generators.
Although the volume of the proposed corona generator is sim-
ilar to the volume of the conventional generators, the weight of
the proposed generator is less than the weight of the conven-
tional generators. Specifically, the proposed corona generator is
lighter because no oil bath is used for the transformer and be-
cause the resonant inductor is implemented without magnetic
cores despite the fact that it requires more copper. As a result,
the proposed generator is also more cost effective.
The expected reliability of the proposed corona generator is
high due to the fact that there are no adjacent conductors with
large voltage differences and that there are no high-voltage con-
ductors near grounded surfaces such as in the case of the con-
ventional high-voltage transformers. In addition, as a result of
the segmented structure of the resonant inductor (Fig. 9), there
are no critical areas with enhanced electric fields.
Nevertheless the construction of the proposed corona gener-
ator is different from the construction of the conventional corona
generators, their surface-treatment performance is very similar.
A detailed analysis of the quality of the corona discharge is be-
yond the scope of this paper.
The efficiency of the proposed corona discharge generator
can be further improved by increasing the dc link voltage by
employing a power factor correction rectifier.
Further work will include the application of the proposed
voltage multiplication method to other high-voltage apparatus.
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Nándor Burány was born in Ada, Serbia, in 1958.
He received the Dipl. Eng. degree from the University
of Novi Sad, Yugoslavia, in 1982 and the M.S.E.E de-
gree from the University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Yu-
goslavia, in 1990, both in electrical engineering.
From 1982 to 1991, he was an Instructor at the
Institute for Power and Electronics, Novi Sad. In
1993, he joined the Technical Engineering College,
Subotica, Serbia, where he is a Senior Lecturer.
His 25-year experience includes: modeling, analysis
and design of switching power converter circuits,
magnetic components and analog electronic circuits, with accent on dc power
supplies, inverters, matrix converters, lamp supplies and welding equipment.
His current research is focused on high voltage power converters and electro-
magnetic field analysis.
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 23, NO. 2, MARCH 2008
Lászlo Huber (M’86) was born in Novi Sad, Yu-
goslavia, in 1953. He received the Dipl.Eng. degree
from the University of Novi Sad, Novi Sad,in 1977,
the M.S. degree from the University of Niš, Niš, Yu-
goslavia, in 1983, and the Ph.D. degree from the Uni-
versity of Novi Sad in 1992, all in electrical engi-
neering.
From 1977 to 1992, he was an Instructor at the
Institute for Power and Electronics, University of
Novi Sad. In 1992, he joined the Virginia Power
Electronics Center, Virginia Polytechnic Institute
and State University, Blacksburg, as a Visiting Professor. From 1993 to 1994, he
was a Research Scientist at the Virginia Power Electronics Center. Since 1994,
he has been a Senior Member of the R&D Stuff at the Power Electronics Labo-
ratory, Delta Products Corporation, Research Triangle Park, NC, the Advanced
R&D unit of Delta Electronics, Inc., Taiwan, R.O.C., one of the world’s largest
manufacturers of power supplies. His 30-year experience includes the analysis,
simulation, and design of high-frequency, high-power-density, single-phase
and three-phase power processors; modeling, simulation, evaluation, and
application of high-power semiconductor devices; and modeling, simulation,
analysis, and design of analog and digital electronics circuits. He has published
over 75 technical papers and holds four U.S. patents.
Predrag Pejović (S’91–M’96) was born in Belgrade,
Yugoslavia, in 1966. He received the B.S. and M.S.
degrees in electrical engineering from the University
of Belgrade, in 1990 and 1992, respectively, and
the Ph.D. degree from the University of Colorado,
Boulder, in 1995.
In 1995, he rejoined the University of Belgrade,
where he is presently Professor and Head of the
Department of Electronics. His research interests
are in dynamics of nonlinear systems, analog circuit
design, three-phase high power factor rectifiers,
electronic measurements, and techniques for computer-aided analysis and
design of power electronic systems.