Design of a single-phase rectifier with improved power factor and low THD using boost converter technique

Abstract

The method of using Boost type of converter was proposed for a 300W single-phase rectifier in this paper. By designing the necessary techniques and methodology, the overall Power Factor (PF) and Total Harmonic Distortion would be improved to the expectation. The cause of having low PF and high THD for a diode-capacitor type of rectifiers is related to non-linearity of the input current. Method of re-shaping the input current waveform to be similar pattern as the sinusoidal input voltage is done by the Boost converter and the related controls that act as a Power Factor Correction (PFC) circuit. The results of the designed system were compared against with and without PFC control. The international standard IEC 61000-3-2 on harmonics was used as the reference to determine the performance of the project.