30 KWe Class High Efficiency Arcjet Power Conditioner. Volume 1

Abstract : A 30 kWe arcjet PCU has been designed, built and tested, both with a solid state load and with a 30 kWe arcjet thruster. The arcjet PCU has accumulated over 40 hours full power or nearly full power operating time, and showed no sign of degradation. The measured efficiency was 94%, which can easily be increased to 95% by substitution of some recently available semiconductors. The stability of output current has been demonstrated while using current-mode, pulse-width modulation control. Keywords: Power conditioning, Arcjet, High efficiency, and Current-mode pulse-width modulation.