8-Stage Pulse Generator for Bipolar Ground-Symmetric Operation

For laboratory-scale experiments on microbial decontamination of liquids by means of pulsed electric fields an eight-stage pulse generator has been developed and tested. The generator delivers a rectangular voltage with adjustable amplitude of up to 8 kV and varying polarity into a resistive load with a resistance ranging from approximately 50 Omega down to approximately 14 Omega. The rise time of voltage and current is less than 150 ns. The pulse length is adjustable between approximately 1 mus and 10 mus. For ground-symmetric operation the generator is connected to ground at its center. The paper describes selected design details and presents the results of first tests.