I need to come up with a power supply for testing various corona discharge ozone generation cells. I know that frequency needs to be adjustable but what range is should be and what its role is in creating the corona I do not know. Now I am aware that not having defined operating parameters makes nailing this down a bit difficult. So maybe if someone could please explain what role the frequency plays I could take it from there. I am a mechanical engineer with an electronics background. Voltage I think I want to be in the 10-12kv range. Current is something I need to know as well. I could use a little help there. This power supply is only for prototyping cell designs so I can scale down the size of my test cells as long as its in the ball park.
If anyone can take some time and guide me a little here and educate me a bit I would be most grateful..

Jeff Wagner

 

You can use for ozone generation "Neon sign transformer", $34.89 on amazon:

Connect it to your ozone generation cell. Current will set up automatically. If cell is transparent,
you will see violet glow (discharge).

 

Certainly a neon display TRANSFORMER can work. To adjust the voltage use an actual variable voltage transformer, either a "POWERSTAT" or a "VARIAC" type variable transformer. Those will leave you stuck with around 60 Hz, I am not sure how high a frequency they can use. The advantage is that you can calculate the actual voltage knowing the input voltage and the transformer ratio.
For a widely variable frequency it gets quite a bit more complicated.

 

What does varying the frequency do for you?

 

Varying the frequency affects the effect of capacitance to the surroundings. It also has a great deal of influence on the effects of reactive circuit elements. A transformer that operates with good efficiency at 60 Hz will not be very effective at 60 Kilohertz. Or even at six kilohertz.

I have an interesting Gas Discharge Tube power pack that uses an oscillator to drive a quite small high frequency transformer to produce the high voltage. The effect on a sign tube is a bit different, and the RFI produced by an arc from it is awesome.

 

Varying the frequency affects the effect of capacitance to the surroundings. It also has a great deal of influence on the effects of reactive circuit elements. A transformer that operates with good efficiency at 60 Hz will not be very effective at 60 Kilohertz. Or even at six kilohertz.

I have an interesting Gas Discharge Tube power pack that uses an oscillator to drive a quite small high frequency transformer to produce the high voltage. The effect on a sign tube is a bit different, and the RFI produced by an arc from it is awesome.

I have noticed that almost all the industrial ozone generators that use corona discharge have frequency adjustable power supplies. Assuming that these companies that are building these generators are having their own transformers made in what I assume is a configuration that is optimal for what they need. What other reasons would they have for making the power supplies have adjustable frequency? I am really trying to learn what they are using the adjustable frequency for. Is it to get the last little bit of performance out of the generator by being able to adjust for the variances in manufacturing?

 

There are a few production variables that may need to be compensated for, such as the transformer resonant frequency, and assorted capacitances. AND there are a lot of regulations about radiation of RF signals. So that is why the adjustments are provided. Performance optimization is not at the top of the list.