Comparative analysis of Resonant inverters
for ozone generation application
Pavan.Ba, Divakar B.Pb
a
Department of EEE,RITM,Bangaluru,pavan.power100@gmail.com
b
Department of EEE,RITM,Bangaluru,divakar@revainstitution.org
Abstract Ozone is a natural disinfectant that can be
used for purification of farm products. However,
Occurrence of Ozone in nature involves generation of
high voltage, so a special high voltage generator is
required to generate Ozone on site. In this paper a
parallel resonant inverter is designed and developed
to generate high voltage for Ozone generator. Several
other topologies which can be contenders for this
application are studied and compared. In this
proposed work, parallel resonant inverter is selected
and studied in detail. Design guidelines are considered
to design passive components like inductor, capacitor
to undergo resonance and so as to achieve to high
voltage. A prototype is built and tested. Comparison is
done for considered inverters were advantage and
disadvantage for each inverter are discussed. Each
inverter is simulated in MATLAB and practical
model of parallel resonant inverter which is capable
of generating high is constructed.
KeywordsOzone generator; Parallel resonant
inverter
I. INTRODUCTION
In the recent past there has been a considerable
increase in pollution due to ever increasing
industrial activities leading to health hazards. In
addition to this high contents of pesticides in
vegetables and fruits are also a source of concern.
Cleaning of vegetables and fruits and getting rid of
high chemical contents is a big challenge. So, in
order to overcome this problem Ozone gas (O3)
which is obtain from high voltage ozone generators
are very much used for cleaning vegetables, fruits,
and also as room freshening agent. This gas
effectively takes off all harmful chemicals from
fruits, vegetables etc.
Ozone or O3, is a molecule which consists of
three oxygen atoms. These three oxygen atoms
combine together to form an unstable toxic gas
which are highly reactive and concentrated when
compared to other gases present in the air. At
ground level, smog is the major component present
in the Ozone gas. Ozone is found very much high at
stratosphere layer in the atmosphere, protecting all
living organism by filtering out the harmful ultra-
violet radiation which are continuously emitting
from the sun. This ozone and its advantages should
not be confused with above discussed artificial
generated Ozone gas.
There are so many methods adopted for generating
ozone gas, but the best methods are classified in to
two:
1. Ultra violet light method and
2. Dielectric barrier discharge (DBD).
Both of these require high frequency high voltages
for the production of ozone gas from ozone
generator, among them discharge method is most
economical and viable to use and to implement [1]
[2]. In order to obtain ozone gas, ozone chamber or
generator which is capable of withstanding high
voltage stress has to be constructed. Usually these
chambers are built in circular or in rectangular
shape, inside this there will be a glass or plane
electrodes (electrodes usually made from aluminum
or copper). A muscovite mica or asbestos sheet is
used as the dielectric. The discharge gap has to be
set between the electrodes and casing is done by
using acrylic fiber. There will be inlet and outlet in
the chamber to suck in oxygen to chamber and to
give out O3 gas from chamber.
In olden days, ac source of frequency 50 to 60
Hz is coupled with a transformer which has more
turns ratio are used as high voltage source for ozone
chamber. Since the chamber require high voltage to
operate near breakdown spark potential of oxygen
atom. The voltage generated by such low frequency
transformer must be about 20 to 30 kV for 1-2mm
gap to initiate electron discharge to break atom.
Maintaining this amount of voltage is difficult and
also there is difficulty in controlling production of
ozone from ozone chamber. Furthermore,
considering safety of users and as per IEEE
standards using such a high voltage are not suitable
for household application.
However, it was recently identified that one can use
high frequency power supply usually operating in
the range of five to hundreds of kHz for ozone
generator application. And also using such a high
frequency source increases power density of
electrodes and hence increases ozone production in
the ozone chamber. Also using such a high
frequency source leads to advantage of less power
consumption, compact in size. Ozone generator
which is capable of operating in voltage range of 3
to 4kv is much more efficient for domestic purpose
is constructed and achieving such a voltage can be
easily obtained by using inverters. And also one can
use resonant concept and the inverter input usually
varies in the range of 20 40VDC.
Usage of such inverters for high voltage leads to
so many innovation in the high voltage engineering
and also leads many researchers to focus on this
field to design energy efficient ozone chamber and
inverter.
II. DESIGN AND EXPERIMENTAL SETUP
A. Procedure for ozone generation
Firstly one must need to feed oxygen to chamber
by using air compressor. When high voltage is
applied to chamber, the bond that holds the oxygen
atom gets apart and leads to two separate oxygen
molecule. This free oxygen molecule attracted to O2
atom to from O3 gas. This O3 atom is unstable [2][3]
[4] and again retain to original stage after 10 to 20
minutes depending on environmental temperature.
General equation for the generation of ozone gas
is given as 3O2 2O3 H = 68 kcal. All this
chemical reaction takes place inside chamber shown
in figure 1. Barrier discharge is advantageous than
other method because of its behavior such as, low
power consumption and low power requirement
when compared to other method, and its capacity at
low temperature to undergo various chemical and
physical reactions within gases and its non-
equilibrium property.
Figure 1 schematic representation of ozone generation
B. Resonant Inverters
Resonant inverter consists of energy storing
elements like inductor and capacitor which are
placed in the series or in parallel with load resistor.
The switches produce a square wave voltage when
fed by input dc voltage and the inductor-capacitor
combination transform the current waveform by
undergoing resonance, there operating frequency
should be selected such that to obtain proper soft
switching.
The frequency, at which the impedance of the
inductance and capacitance cancels each other, is
called resonant frequency. Usually while designing
inverters the ratio of switching frequency to
resonant frequency equals to one. If the output of
bridge is a square wave at frequency fo, then the
inductor and capacitor combination acts as filter
which helps to pass only the fundamental
frequency which helps to suppress the harmonics.
And if it is possible to remove the third and higher
harmonics of the square wave output of inverter,
than the voltage appears across the load is purely
sinusoidal. Generally frequency response of
inductor and capacitor components are expressed in
terms of bandwidth, which characterized by the
factor called quality factor Q.
The total harmonic distortion (THD) can be
reduced by increasing quality factor Q of the
passive component (L&C). Increasing the value
inductance and reducing capacitance value results
in increasing quality factor Q. If the switching of
switches takes place at the resonant frequency and
if the quality factor of the circuit is high, switches
starts to operate when the load current is at or near
zero. This is important because the power
consumed by the switches is less than the non-
resonant inverter.
C. Parallel inverter
In parallel inverter, resonant components
inductor and capacitor are connected in parallel
which shown in figure 2 Achieving high voltage by
keeping quality factor high and considering the
ratio of switching frequency to resonant frequency
equals to one.
Equivalent resistor Req for the above circuit is given
by the ratio of the capacitor voltage to square wave
current of the fundamental frequency.
Vy
Req = ( 1)
Iy
Req =
V Out ( 2 ) (2)
4 ( I )
Out
Consider VOut and IOut are full wave average
rectified voltage and current
2 V Out 2
Req = ( )( )
8
I Out
= ( R Load ) (3)
8
Where Vx and Iy are amplitudes of the fundamental
frequency of vx and iy and RLoad is the load resistor.
Output voltage for the above inverter can be
obtained as follows
Vy 1
= (4 )
Vx X XL
XC( ) ( )
1 L + J
Req
Where Vy can be expressed in average full wave 2
X X
voltage as

V y =V Out (5)
( ) ( )
1 L 2+ L
XC Req
2

2
And Vx is input square waves fundamental
frequency, of amplitude 4 V Dc
V out =

V X=
4 ( V2 ) (6)
Dc
Hence the output voltage can be obtained by using
above equation.
Quality factor can be obtained in relation with
Now substituting equation (5) and (6) in equation inductor , capacitor and frequency as follows
(4) we get, Req
V out 4 1 Q= (10)
( )
( ( ) ( ))
= 2 (7) w o L
V Dc X XL
1 L +J Where,
XC Req
1
w o= (11)
X X
2 L C
( ) ( )
1 L 2+ L
XC Req Also, quality factor (Q) can be also be obtained by
the ratio of input to output voltge

V Out
2 Q= (12)
V Dc 2
4V DC
V out =

Since full bridge is not there in the above circuit
hence equation (8) turns to be as follows