Power processor circuit and method for corona discharge pollutant destruction apparatus

DETAILED DESCRIPTION This invention concerns a power processor circuit for supplying power to generate a corona discharge in a corona discharge pollutant destruction reactor.
Several embodiments of the invention utilize discrete solid state field effect transistor (FET) circuits or FET integrated circuits (ICs) to drive high voltage pulses by using direct current (DC) power supplies of only several hundred volts, thereby greatly reducing the volume, weight and cost of the circuits.
In one embodiment, a series resonant inductor-capacitor (LC) circuit is driven by four high power metal-oxide semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFETs) operating with voltages and currents on the order of 1000 volts and 20 amperes and are connected in a "full bridge" configuration driven by a DC voltage on the order of 900 volts.
The LC circuit resonates at about 5-15 MHz.
The symmetrically arranged MOSFETs drive the LC resonator, with each MOSFET connected to a driver circuit that comprises multiple parallel stages of FETs.
Each FET in the driver circuit is connected to at least one amplification and isolation circuit that receives rectangular pulses from a low-voltage signal source.
The isolation circuits used in one embodiment are voltage transformers which isolate currents between the FETs and initial amplifiers.
The driver circuit is also isolated from the signal source to protect the signal source from the driver circuit's high voltages and currents.
Isolation may be achieved by a remote transmitter/receiver, such as a fiber optic transmitter/receiver link that transmits optical pulse signals from the signal source to the driver circuit but blocks voltages and currents.
In another embodiment, two high power MOSFETs are connected to only one end of a series LC resonator circuit in a "half bridge" configuration and are biased by DC voltages of only about .
+-.
200 volts.
Each MOSFET is connected to a driver circuit comprising multiple parallel stages of high speed FET IC drivers capable of amplifying high frequency pulses