COLORADO ELECTRONICS INC — National Aeronautics and Space Administration SBIR Phase I: S3

Description

Traditionally, PPUs for electric propulsion have been designed around a specific thruster type with little attention given to compatibility with other vendor thruster models or changing power needs.nbsp; Furthermore, many of the traditional designs based on the Weinberg converter are restricted to specialized, low voltage, bus systems.nbsp; The proposed research will test the feasibility of using multiple anode power modules for PPUs in the 12kW or higher.nbsp; The purpose of this phase-one proposal is to convince the reader that there may be significant advantages of the power-brick-array worth exploring.Using well designed, reliable, wide-range, module arrays has become increasingly popular for military power conversion.nbsp; It is not unusual to see 5kW converters being made from arrays of 300-watt power bricks. The advantages lie not only in the convenience of design but also there is reliability in high volume electronics.nbsp; nbsp;Space-rated electronic components carry their reliability guarantee from extensive testing but commercial power supplies made in high volumes have been thoroughly field tested and have a higher degree of robustness.Colorado Power Electronics (CPE) has developed a hall thruster anode power supply that has both wide input range and wide-output range.nbsp;nbsp; This 2.25kW module can be used in a power array much like the power modules from Vicor trade; or Synqor trade;.nbsp; This wide-ranging topology has been used successfully for plasma loads with an estimated $2 billion market sales since inception.nbsp; Originally patented in 1996 this topology is still the go-to design for modern thin-film-deposition.nbsp; nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;