Installation of a 100 kJ pulsed power system to drive pulsed plasma devices

A pulsed-plasma accelerator is being developed at CPP-IPR, Assam. The accelerator consists of a co-axial electrode assembly housed inside an evacuated chamber that can produce high speed plasma stream of density approximately equal to 10²² m^-3. For driving this plasma accelerator, a Pulsed Power System (PPS) of energy nearly 200kJ will be coupled to the electrode assembly. The voltage appearing across the electrode assembly will breakdown the gas present in the inter-electrode gap and create high density plasma. In this paper, the installation of a 100kJ PPS will be discussed, which is one module of the 200 kJ PPS of the plasma accelerator. In general, the conventional high voltage PPS is basically for producing fast output pulses (time periods of few microseconds) according to their uses. In contrast to that, the newly installed pulsed power system at CPP-IPR will produce relatively longer pulse of time period around 1.0ms. This PPS consists of 5 capacitors of rating 180μF, 15 kV each, connected in parallel by using two parallel plates of SS. The newly installed 100kJ bank has been tested and the detailed report of installation and testing will be presented. (author)