Reduction of Inrush Current in a Shockwave Non-Thermal Food Processing System Using an Exponential Clock Pulse Generator

Recently, shockwave food processing is drawing much attention as a low-cost non-thermal food process technique. In shockwave non-thermal food processing, underwater shockwaves are generated by a high voltage generator. Therefore, high inrush currents and high voltage stress on circuit components significantly reduce the reliability and life expectancy of the circuit. However, to the best of our knowledge, stress reduction techniques and their experimental verification have not been studied yet in the shockwave non-thermal food processing system. In this paper, we propose a stress reduction technique for the shockwave non-thermal food processing system and investigate the effectiveness of the proposed technique experimentally. To achieve high reliability and life expectancy, a new high voltage multiplier with an exponential clock pulse generator is proposed for the shockwave non-thermal food processing system. By slowing down the rate at which the capacitors charge in the high voltage multiplier, the exponential clock pulse generator significantly reduces the inrush current. Furthermore, to perform shockwave non-thermal food processing continuously at a lower voltage level, we present a new electrode with a reset mechanism for wire electric discharge (WED), where a square-shaped metal wire swings on a hinge in the proposed electrode. The proposed electrode enables not only shockwave generation at a lower voltage level but also continuous non-thermal food processing, because the square-shaped metal wire is not melted in the WED process. To confirm the validity of the proposed techniques, some experiments are performed regarding the laboratory prototype of the shockwave non-thermal food processing system. In the performed experiments, reduction of inrush currents and effective food processing are confirmed.

Design of Falling-Edge Triggered T Flip-Flop based on Quantum-Dot Cellular Automata

A T flip-flop, which is an essential element of a counter, has been proposed as various types of quantum-dot cellular automata (QCA) circuits, but practicality is not expected because there is no clock in circuit. A T flip-flop is a circuit which outputs value changing in synchronization with the rising or falling edge of a clock. In a QCA circuit, a clock pulse generator outputs the time at which the clock changes and it is required for the circuit. In this paper, we propose a falling-edge triggered T flip-flop based on QCA.

All-optical high frequency clock pulse generator using the feedback mechanism in Toffoli gate with Kerr material

Optics is found as a potential information carrier in information processing because of its superfast speed of operation. For such operations, optical Kerr materials are highly sensitive for use as optical switches. In this paper, the authors for thr first time propose a new scheme of generation of an all-optical pulse train generator using the feedback mechanism in an all-optical Toffoli gate with Kerr material.