Investigation of Power Factor Correction in Single Phase AC-DC Converters

An ac to dc converter is an integral part of any power supply unit used in the all electronic equipments. These electronic equipments form a major part of load on the utility. Generally, to convert line frequency ac to dc, a line frequency diode bridge rectifier is used. To reduce the ripple in the dc output voltage, a large capacitor is used at the rectifier output. But due to this large capacitor, the current drawn by this converter is peaky in nature. This input current is rich in low order harmonics. Also, as power electronics equipments are increasingly being used in power conversion, they inject low order harmonics into the utility. Due to the presence of these harmonics, the total harmonic distortion is high and the input power factor is poor. Because of the problems associated with low power factor and harmonics, utilities will enforce harmonic standards and guidelines, which will limit the amount of current distortion allowed into the utility, and thus the simple diode rectifier may not be in use. So, there is a need to achieve rectification at close to unity power factor and low input current distortion. Initially, power factor correction schemes have been implemented mainly for heavy industrial loads like induction motors, induction heating furnaces etc., which forms a major part of lagging power factor load. Hence, PFC is becoming an important aspect even for low power application electronic equipments. There are two types of PFC‟s. 1) Passive PFC, 2) Active PFC. The active PFC is further classified into low-frequency and high-frequency active PFC depending on the switching frequency. Different techniques in passive PFC and active PFC are presented here. Among these PFC‟s, we will get better power factor by using high-frequency active PFC circuit. Any DC-DC converters can be used for this purpose, if a suitable control method is used to shape its input current or if it has inherent PFC properties. The DC-DC converters can operate in Continuous Inductor Current Mode – CICM, where the inductor current never reaches zero during one switching cycle or Discontinuous Inductor Current Mode - DICM, where the inductor current is zero during intervals of the switching cycle.