Development of high-speed and high-voltage pulse generator for NOx decomposition plasma reactor

This paper proposes a novel high-speed and high-voltage pulse generator for a NOx decomposition plasma reactor for automotive application, which is composed of a DC/DC step-up converter and a multiple-toroidal-core technique. The DC/DC converter steps up 12-V battery voltage to 420 V with an isolated high-frequency transformer. 12 ferrite toroidal cores are connected to the output of the DC/DC converter, and they are simultaneously excited by turning on 12 MOSFETs. The synchronous switching is achieved within only ±2-ns time deviation. The secondary high-voltage winding is placed through the 12 toroidal cores, and generates 10,000 V across the terminals in 50 ns. In order to make this high-speed and high-voltage pulse generation possible, the system has unique configuration and special appearance. In the paper, an experimental prototype and test results are demonstrated to show the performance of the proposed system.