IGBT with Oil Extraction

As the petroleum industry matures, it must locate and extract oil from deeper and deeper reservoirs under the surface of the earth. The extraction of oil from deep underground, using oil wells is difficult due to high viscosity and inclusion of asphalt. The viscosity can be reduced by either irrigating with hot water, addition of chemicals, or by electric heating of the pipelines. Electric heating technology is widely used by the oil industry because of its low cost. A single phase AC source at 40-100 Hz is supplied to the well wall to provide resistive heating. A basic set up is needed for heating the oil pipe. The heating loop consists of the oil pipe and heater at the bottom of the well. When current flows through the loop, it not only increases the temperature at the bottom of the well but along the pipe due to the resistance of its walls.

For an example, we can say that a 50-Hz, 380-V, three-phase, AC power is converted to a DC bus by the rectifier stage and then inverted using the IGBTs to variable frequency ranging from 40-100 Hz. The heating efficiency is increased by 50 percent with this approach. The set has advantages of small volume and light weight because of using IGBT in the inverter system.

Fairchild and Fuji Electric Are Going to Launch Advance and Descrete IGBTs

Fairchild Semiconductor is extending its rising product line of automotive-category semiconductor solutions for hybrid electric vehicles (HEV), plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) and electric vehicles (EV) with its new detached and bare die IGBTs and diodes. These IGBTs and diodes are perfect for traction inverters, nucleus of all HEVs, PHEVs and EVs that alter the batteries' electricity from direct current into the three-phase alternating current needed by the vehicle’s drive motors.

These new discrete and bare die IGBTs and diodes utilize state-of-the-art third generation Field Stop Trench IGBT technology and a soft fast recovery diode is eligible for automotive-grade standards and has extra features and options. The mix of these innovations, characteristics and options enables Fairchild to supply products with a tight parametric ordination for both discrete and bare die solutions.

Fairchild's latest FGY160T65SPD_F085 and FGY120T65SPD_F085 discrete IGBTs are appropriate to traction inverters and other HEV/PHEV/EV powertrain stuffs that need high power density and high reliableness.

Supplementing their performance and reliableness is the adaptability these discrete IGBTs offer designers to modify their products. Designers can just add IGBTs in parallel to accomplish the needed system power rating, while also enhancing the total efficiency of their traction inverter or other powertrain component designs.

Fairchild is also making declaration about the availableness of its PCGA200T65NF8 rectifiers and PCRKA30065F8 bare die IGBTs and diodes for automakers and automotive parts suppliers making their own power modules for high performance traction inverters and other motor-driving components.

Fuji Electric is famous for their transistor modules for high speed switching applications. They have comprised another lineup of power semiconductors to its product portfolio with the “High-Speed W” Series of high-speed discrete IGBTs. The latest product series utilizes a slender IGBT chip to miniaturize, as a result of this, lessening power loss (turnoff loss) in switching operation by nearly 40% in comparison to standard products (High-Speed V Series). This plays a part in energy saving and power cost decrease of the devices on which the products are mounted. Loss in switching operation has also been minimized (subdued heat propagation) for compatibility with higher switching frequencies (20 to 100 kHz) in comparison to standard products (around 20 kHz).

“The introduction of the High-Speed W Series is a valuable addition to our product portfolio as it offers our customers advanced features that they need to compete in today’s market,” said Jeff Knapp, General Manager of Fuji Electric’s Semiconductor Dept. “The new IGBT allows the ability to downsize the peripheral parts such as coils and transformers within the system and therefore contributes to the overall downsizing of the equipment itself, leading to a reduction in the total cost of ownership.”

The company refers the expanding worldwide need for energy in the current years as the main impetus behind the development of the High-Speed W Series. The ever-increasing demand for the energy-efficient performance of industrial and communications equipments along with the need for downsizing and space-saving of the equipment itself imbued them to bring in a high-speed discrete IGBT that fulfilled these needs.

IGBT WITH INDUCTION ROW

Rice is the first & foremost food for billions of people around the world, especially in Asian countries such as China, India, and Japan, with mass populations. According to Asian Rice Foundation, “Rice is arguably the world’s most important food. It is the second most widely cultivated cereal in the world, after wheat, and is a staple food of over half the world’s population. Rice can be cooked in a variety of ways, including boiling, baking, roasting, frying, and pressure-cooking. Cooking rice in an automatic rice cooker is becoming very popular, as it ensures consistent results and cooking instruction is much simpler to follow”.

Many Asian companies have developed rice cookers based up on the induction heating principle. The induction heating can be accomplished by using an induction cooking plate or preferably by using an induction rice cooker. Two types of circuit topologies have been explored for the induction rice cooker. First one is the half-bridge series resonant converter and another is the quasi-resonant converter. The series resonant converter has the advantages of stable switching, low cost, and streamline design. The quasi-resonant converter has the advantage of a smaller design with reduced heat sink. The quasi-resonant converter is more widely used. Due to the large market for these appliances, some semiconductor companies have developed IGBT products optimized for this market for the quasi-resonant converter topology. IGBTs feature a robust and cost effective Field Stop (FS) trench construction, and provide superior performance in demanding switching applications, offering both low on-state voltage and minimal switching loss. IGBTs are well suited for this type of resonant or soft switching applications.

IGBT with Portable Defibrillators

One of the every four deaths in the advanced world takes place because of cardiac arrest. Eighty-five percent of deaths from sudden cardiac arrest occur due to ventricular fibrillation. Without synchronization of heart muscles, blood flow through the body is interrupted leading to starving oxygen from organs. The victim will almost certainly die within 10 minutes unless aid is provided. A defibrillator applies a dose of electrical energy to the heart muscles which depolarizes a critical mass of the heart muscle, terminates the arrhythmia, and allows normal heart rhythm to be re-established. It is essential that the defibrillator be located close to the victim and be easily operated to provide the life-saving response within 10 minutes.

Automated external defibrillators (AED) are now widely deployed in places such as corporate and government offices, shopping centers, airplanes, airports, restaurants, hotels, sports stadiums, schools and universities with a high density of aging populations. The automated external defibrillator is designed to provide simple voice commands to prompt the administration of the live-saving electrical jolt to the victim. According to USA Today, about 450,000 people die each year in the U.S. from sudden cardiac arrest. Among these victims, the American Medical Association (AMA) estimates that more than 100,000 lives can be saved by the availability of modern AEDs enabled by IGBTs. Many companies have made IGBT particularly customized for the implantable defibrillator market.

IGBT with Microwave Oven

Microwave ovens are used to heat foods quickly and conveniently and it has become an inseparable part of our kitchens and offices now-a-days. It is also used for used for stewing, frying, baking, steaming, and fermenting foods. Microwave ovens are designed for tabletop use or for mounting above the range. Microwave ovens heat food by following the principle of dielectric heating using microwave radiation, usually at a frequency of 2.45 GHz, through the food. Water, fat, and other substances in the food, absorb energy from the microwaves resulting in heating. The microwaves interact with the food in a uniform fashion leading to food being more evenly heated throughout.

Prior the availableness of the IGBT, the traditional power supply for the magnetron was a ferro-resonant circuit. Although simple in construction, this power supply was heavy and bulky because of the large size and weight of the low-frequency (50-60 Hz) step-up transformer. After the availability of the IGBT, a magnetron power supply based up on using a high frequency inverter was developed. In this new power supply the anode voltage of the Magnetron rises above 3500 volts when the IGBT is turned on allowing it to generate microwave energy. The power delivered by the magnetron can therefore be precisely controlled using the on-time for the IGBT. Using the IGBT-based inverter circuit, the weight of the transformer could be lessened by more than 10-times.

IGBT WITH VACUUM CLEANERS

A vacuum cleaner is an appliance that uses an air pump to create a partial vacuum to suck up dust and dirt from floors, and other surfaces. The dirt is collected by a dust-bag for future disposal. Hubert Cecil Booth invented the motorized vacuum cleaner in 1901. Since then, their use has proliferated and vacuum cleaners are now very commonly used in homes on a regular basis to maintain a healthy living environment. Manufacturers of vacuum cleaners include Eureca, Hoover, Bissell, and Dyson. In the past, universal motors were mostly used for vacuum cleaners due to high operating speed with low cost. However, these motors use a mechanical brush which wears out at high speeds limiting the performance.

Modern vacuum cleaners with higher output power (suction) are designed using switched reluctance motors. The power circuits used for operation of the switched reluctance motor in vacuum cleaners. These circuits utilize IGBTs to overcome the difficult start-up problem for switched reluctance motors and for maintaining a high operating speed. The author’s state: “Its lifetime is extended 4 times than that of conventional motor and its suction power is increased 20% at the same volume of conventional universal motor”.

IGBT FOR CAMERA WITH FLASH

Most consumers have already migrated from taking photographs using film to a digital medium. The Digital Still Camera (DSC) has now become common-place. All digital cameras incorporate a flash with many features such as red eye reduction. These capabilities require a digitally programmable control with very compact circuitry to drive the Xenon flash. Some cell-phones now incorporate a flash to improve up on the quality of photographs taken under low light conditions. In addition, electronic control of lighting is used by professional photographers with strobe flashes. Lighting rumors states on their website: “Paul C. Buff’s Einstein monolights have been a big hit in the photographic lighting market, much lauded for their insulated-gate bipolartransistor (IGBT) circuitry and digital remote control.”

A Xenon bulb is used to create a short powerful burst of light with illumination characteristics close to that of sunlight. The Xenon bulb requires a high operating voltage of 320-V derived from a low 3 to 6 volt battery source. This is achieved by using a DC/DC converter with step-up transformer as shown in the figure. The high voltage is stored in a capacitor and discharged into the Xenon blub by turning on the IGBT. The IGBTs must have not only a high sustaining voltage capability but must be capable of operating with a drive voltage of only 4 volts. The footprint of the IGBT must also be reduced with innovative chip design and packaging because it must be capable of handling 150-A for a short duration. A similar circuit is used for the flash in a cell-phone but there is even greater pressure for IGBT manufacturers to reduce the foot-print and gate drive voltage. Some companies have described their technology roadmap for shrinking the footprint for the IGBT devices used for the flash application.