Cascaded boost converter-based high-voltage pulse generator for pulsed electric field applications

Food processing technologies for food preservation have been in constant development over a few decades in order to meet current consumer’s demands. Healthy competitive improvements are observed in both thermal and non-thermal food processing technology since past two decades due to technical revolution. Among these novel technologies, pulsed electric field food processing technology has shown to be a potential non-thermal treatment capable of preserving liquid foods. The high-voltage pulse generators specifically find their applications in pulsed electric field technology. So, this paper proposes a new structure of a high-voltage pulse generator with a cascaded boost converter topology. The choice of a cascaded boost converter helps in selecting low DC input voltage and hence the size and space requirement of the high-voltage pulse generator is minimized. The proposed circuit is capable of producing high-voltage pulses with flexibility of an adjusting duty ratio and frequency. The designed circuit generates a maximum peak voltage of 1 kV in the frequency range of 7.5–20 kHz and the pulse width range of 0.8–1.8 μs. Also, the impedance matching between the cascaded boost converter and the high-voltage pulse generator is found simple without further additional components. The efficiency can be improved in the circuit by avoiding low frequency transformers.