The rectifier stack may not be a goer yet but I have read that several coilers have used rectifiers and it seems like it may possibly boost the efficiency of the primary circuit quite a bit. The main reason for rotary gaps seems to be synchronization with mains to ensure the highest charge and discharge on each half of the wave. The Idea of a rectifier is since the polarity does not reverse, any residual charge in the capacitor after discharging will add to the charge being fed in on the next cap charging cycle instead of wasting power by having to discharge the residual. This would probably limit the voltage that the MMC can charge up to before having to discharge (Before the polarity changes). Hopefully by using DC, the MMC will be able to charge up to a higher voltage. Anyway, I am waiting for the diodes to arrive from california, 6kV Piv @200mA diodes will be used in a bridge configuration with strings of 4 diodes (24kV) and 10m resistors to balance the reverse voltage. I could be way off the mark about how diodes would affect the performance but once I get the coil going, I may decide to look into it further.
25/5/2000: A fellow coiler E-Mailed me and suggested that 24vkv is too low, I had already thaught it may be cutting it fine. I will have to increase the rating to 48kV to ensure the diodes don't fail. I will also do away with the resisters since a lot of things I have read suggest that they can cause more problems than they solve, plus also, It has occured to me that the voltage rating of normal resisters is too low. I'll still keep the bleed resisters in the MMC though. |