Plasma Absorption Techniques in Direct Current Circuit Breakers

DC circuit breakers are becoming popular in the industry with the renewable energy demand. Compared to AC circuit breaking, DC circuit breaking needs an advanced method to immobilize the arc generated during the opening process of the circuit breaker. These days, AC circuit breakers are used with simple modifications for DC circuit breaking. Commercial parties simply modify the AC circuit breakers to operate on DC. However, specifically manufactured DC circuit breakers are necessary for the long run as modified versions still have minimum cycle life due to contact point degradation compared to commercially available AC circuit breakers. This paper proposes a new concept for DC circuit breakers where a supercapacitor will be used to absorb the arc energy to extend its cycle life.