 Power factor and the size of the capacitor
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IamSmooth
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Sun Mar 14 2010, 07:20AM
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Registered Member #190
Joined: Fri Feb 17 2006, 12:00AM
Location:
Posts: 1567
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If I have a voltage rectifier with capacitor smoothing can one approximate the capacitor reactance as 1/2pi*f*C?
If so, the larger the capacitor the better the smoothing (less ripple) and the smaller the reactive component. Wouldn't this yield a better power factor?
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Dr. Slack
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Registered Member #72
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 08:29AM
Location: UK St. Albans
Posts: 1659
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Have you got a circuit simulator to hand? If so, model an AC source, through a diode, into a parallel RC. See how the width of the current spike varies as the capacitance increases.
As the capaitance increases, its voltage drop during the off period of the half cycle decreases. That means that when it next comes to conduct, it has a smaller part of the sinusoidal waveform to do it. As the current waveform becomes spikier, it's less like a PF=1 sinusoidal current waveform.
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