Abstract: The availability of safe drinking water in the community is always regarded as a significant public health achievement. It is seen that water-borne diseases are the world’s third-leading reason for mortality. Most of the current water treatment systems rely on the use of chemicals to kill the harmful disease-causing bacteria and pathogens in the contaminated water. While the use of these chemicals is effective to some level but there remain concerns over the side effects of using such chemicals for water treatment. The alternative way to treat and sterilize water is to use the approach of electroporation to kill harmful bacteria in the contaminated water. In this technique, a very high voltage pulse is applied within the volume of water across the electrode. When a high voltage pulse is applied, the cell membrane of the bacteria becomes vulnerable, and it is then weakened or most probable deactivated. In this paper, a modular high voltage pulse-generator power electronic circuit is proposed and is simulated. The proposed pulse generator made of several modules each containing capacitors is sequentially charged from a comparatively low voltage direct current supply. The simulation result shows that a pulse of 6 kV could successfully be generated with a precise selection of capacitors. The generated voltage is applied across a load of 2.5 kΩ which represents electrode separation of 12.5 mm in regular tap water to mimic the electroporation in the contaminated water.

Keywords: electroporation, high voltage pulse, contaminated water, disinfect, bacteria, safe drinking water.

| DOI: 10.17148/IARJSET.2022.9320