Design and Fabrication of Cost-Effective High Voltage Power Source for the Generation of Non-Thermal Plasma

This paper presents the design and construction of a cost-effective high voltage power supply system to generate non-thermal plasma at atmospheric pressure. The system converts a standard 220 V, 50 Hz AC input to a high frequency and high voltage output for corona and dielectric barrier discharges. The circuit is equipped with a step-down transformer, bridge rectifier, push-pull MOSFET inverter, and a custom designed ferrite core transformer, where the gate pulses to the inverter circuit is powered by ATmega328P microcontroller using pulse-width modulation technique. The system produces a maximum output voltage of 9 kV with variable frequency up to 26 kHz. The hand wound ferrite core transformer was made from scrap materials, and the insulation materials were selected through insulation breakdown testing for use in high voltage applications for safety and durability. The entire system was built without the aid of CNC or precision machine tools, demonstrating an accessible and possible means of high voltage supply construction.