Hi everyone, I have just registered as I was searching for help on the web for a project I want to build, and came across this site.
The project I have in mind is actually a double purpose build, I would like to build a largish electrolysis generator ( brown gas ) to run a welding/heating gas torch and the second function is to do electroplating.
The stuff I have to work with is so far might give me a few issues, namely I have a largish transformer that I pulled out of an 5Kw UPS. it has a pair of 240V input leads and 2 pairs of output leads. They output 54V AC and 124V AC with no load, I haven't tested the output amp capacity but it should be reasonable, at least enough for my purpose.
I am intending to buy a PWM controller off eBay which does up to 10-50V DC 60A , it has a potentiometer to control output and can output 3Kw.
I also have 4 x 18amp UPS AGM batteries which I intend to wire in series to give me the voltage I need to run the PWM controller and I would like to use that transformers' rectified voltage to charge up the batteries as they are being drained.
So here is where I need advice, when I connect a 50A 1000v full bridge rectifier to that 54V output it should increase the DC voltage and apart from adding a capacitor to smooth out the ripples, is there any simple way to drop the bridges output voltage down so that the PWM controller doesn't get overload by the higher voltage even though it is connected to the 4 batteries, as well as not damaging the batteries.
The other thing I am not sure about is how to drop the voltage of the PWM controller to say 14-18V so that the electrolytic cells and or electroplating bath don't put out too much heat without dropping too many amps in the process. Now from what I remember about bridge rectifiers is that they should drop the voltage the moment you connect a load to it, such as the batteries or the PWM controller but not sure by how much.
So that sums it up, am I barking up the wrong tree or is it doable without too much drama and/or am I missing something? Or is there a simpler way to do all of this?
Cheers
The project I have in mind is actually a double purpose build, I would like to build a largish electrolysis generator ( brown gas ) to run a welding/heating gas torch and the second function is to do electroplating.
The stuff I have to work with is so far might give me a few issues, namely I have a largish transformer that I pulled out of an 5Kw UPS. it has a pair of 240V input leads and 2 pairs of output leads. They output 54V AC and 124V AC with no load, I haven't tested the output amp capacity but it should be reasonable, at least enough for my purpose.
I am intending to buy a PWM controller off eBay which does up to 10-50V DC 60A , it has a potentiometer to control output and can output 3Kw.
I also have 4 x 18amp UPS AGM batteries which I intend to wire in series to give me the voltage I need to run the PWM controller and I would like to use that transformers' rectified voltage to charge up the batteries as they are being drained.
So here is where I need advice, when I connect a 50A 1000v full bridge rectifier to that 54V output it should increase the DC voltage and apart from adding a capacitor to smooth out the ripples, is there any simple way to drop the bridges output voltage down so that the PWM controller doesn't get overload by the higher voltage even though it is connected to the 4 batteries, as well as not damaging the batteries.
The other thing I am not sure about is how to drop the voltage of the PWM controller to say 14-18V so that the electrolytic cells and or electroplating bath don't put out too much heat without dropping too many amps in the process. Now from what I remember about bridge rectifiers is that they should drop the voltage the moment you connect a load to it, such as the batteries or the PWM controller but not sure by how much.
So that sums it up, am I barking up the wrong tree or is it doable without too much drama and/or am I missing something? Or is there a simpler way to do all of this?
Cheers
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