Piezoelectric-Resonator-Based Power Supply for an Ozone-Generating Dielectric Barrier Discharge Reactor

In this work, a dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) reactor power supply designed for operation with a low input voltage is presented. A piezoelectric resonator (PR) is used to provide voltage gain and high efficiency in a small volume for portable (point of use) ozone generation, suitable for the disinfection of surfaces, for example. The power supply was coupled to a small, asymmetrical DBD reactor and achieved an efficiency of 63% and an ozone generation efficacy of 67 g/kWh when operating at 4.4 W. The use of a PR to provide voltage gain has several advantages over, for example, a traditional electromagnetic transformer. The PR has monolithic construction for reliability, is inherently insulated against high voltage due to the ceramic material, can operate up to <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$300~^{\circ }$</tex-math> </inline-formula>C, and its resonant behavior allows the power supply to operate with zero-voltage switching.