For many years we have used 12 pulse technology to mitigate harmonics in electrolytic cells from an SCR circuit. As the electrolytic process is capacitive, it has been suggested that there maybe is no advantage over 6 pulse. I heard that a university in the US had carried out testing on 6, 12 & 18 pulse SCR rectifiers and had published a paper. I would very much like to get a copy of the paper and/or the results. Should anyone know where these maybe obtained I would be grateful.
Perhaps I was a little vague with the question. It has to do with the mitigation of the odd harmonics on the AC side to comply with IEEE-519
To Retired EE.
Sorry I don’t have the date that the paper was published I only heard about it second hand from a T/R manufacturer. Each of our electrolytic cells (operating in seawater) is set to 4.5V at 4000A and they number from 1 to 16 all in series. So the kVA on the AC side can be from around 20 to 360 depending on the model and situation. I’m afraid I don’t have enough smarts to do the calcs myself, however I guess the power factor is around 95% lagging, as the capacitance would offset the inductive reactance of transformer of say 80%.
