A Modular Multilevel Generic Pulse-Waveform Generator for Pulsed Electric Field Applications

Abstract

The Strathprints institutional repository (https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk) is a digital archive of University of Strathclyde research outputs. It has been developed to disseminate open access research outputs, expose data about those outputs, and enable the management and persistent access to Strathclyde's intellectual output.Abstract-High voltage (HV) pulses are used in pulsed electric field (PEF) applications to provide an effective electroporation process, a process in which harmful microorganisms are disinfected when subjected to a PEF. Depending on the PEF application, different HV pulse specifications are required such as: the pulse-waveform shape, the voltage magnitude, the pulse duration, and the pulse repetition rate. In this paper, a generic pulse-waveform generator (GPG) is proposed, the GPG topology is based on half-bridge modular multilevel converter (HB-MMC) cells. The GPG topology is formed of four identical arms of series connected HB-MMC cells forming an H-bridge. Unlike the conventional HB-MMC based converters in HVDC transmission, the GPG load power flow is not continuous which leads to smaller size cell capacitors utilization, hence smaller footprint of the GPG is achieved. The GPG topology flexibility allows the controller software to generate a basic multilevel waveform which can be manipulated to generate the commonly used PEF pulse-wave forms. Therefore, the proposed topology offers modularity, redundancy and scalability. The viability of the proposed GPG converter is validated by MATLAB/Simulink simulation and experimentation.Index Terms-bacterial decontamination, electroporation, HBridge, modular multilevel converters (MMC), pulsed electric field, pulse waveforms generator.

New modular high‐voltage pulse generator based on SEPIC converter for electroporation applications

“…A comprehensive comparison is conducted in Table 4. It has to be mentioned that [15, 17, 21, 22] can generate both unipolar and bipolar pulses, for the equality of the comparison, only the unipolar mode considered here (for bipolar case, the number of components rises significantly except in [15, 22], where the number of components for both unipolar and bipolar pulses remain the same). For the same output pulse voltage (10 kV), the number of the components in the proposed structure is fewer than the other studied topologies.…”

“…In [22], a modular multilevel HV pulse generator is proposed, which can generate different pulse waveforms. This topology is fed from an HV‐DC supply, which can produce unipolar and bipolar pulses.…”

“…In this paper, a new isolated modular HV unipolar pulse generator based on power electronic converters is proposed. The output HV pulse is an exponential pulse, which is widely used in water treatment, air pollution control, and medical treatment applications [22]. This configuration uses a relatively low voltage DC source with an HV gain that does not need HV switches to generate HV pulses.…”

Full-Bridge Modular Multilevel Submodule-Based High-Voltage Bipolar Pulse Generator With Low-Voltage DC, Input for Pulsed Electric Field Applications

“…Practically, classical PGs are able to generate unipolar pulses of rectangular as well as exponential waveforms [6], where these pulses impose electrical stresses on the cellmembrane until electroporation is completed. Bipolar pulses prove their effectiveness in electroporation applications by subjecting the cell membrane to mechanical stresses in addition to the electrical stresses [21]- [22].…”

A Step-Up Modular High-Voltage Pulse Generator Based on Isolated Input-Parallel/Output-Series Voltage-Boosting Modules and Modular Multilevel Submodules

“…The existing modularity with modular multilevel converter (MMC) sub-modules (SMs) has been harnessed to generate HV pulses for IRE [8]- [14]. Not only conventional rectangular pulse-waveforms can be generated by MMC based PGs, but a wide range of pulse-waveforms is also possible [5] and [10]. The majority of these topologies require an HVDC input supply and the obtained pulse peak-voltage is that of the input HVDC level.…”