Is it really possible to "boost" 6 V DC to above 50 kV? Or even 400 kV?
Is it really possible to “boost” 6 V DC to above 50kV? Or even 400kV?
Of course. One common example of something similar (although not as extreme as your specs) is using 12 V in a car to make several 10s of kV to fire the spark plugs.
The same concept can be scaled up to make higher output voltages. It won't be easy to build something with that stepup ratio and output voltage yourself, but the physics is certainly possible.
A battery powering a dc motor in a Van der Graaff generator can produce a million volts quite easily: -
- Take your 6 volts and run it through DC-DC boost converter and then an inverter, you now have really rubbish AC at a slightly more respectable voltage.
- Feed rubbish AC in to a solid state boost circuit, say a Cockroft-Walton voltage multiplier
- Feed the high voltage through a current limiting resistor if you want any kind of continuous draw. Don't bother if you just want a spark.
- Do not lick the operational terminals.
The trick lies in how you manage to shove so many stages of a CW in a reasonably compact space. You're slightly saved on the issue of voltage isolation since the output terminals are at opposite sides of the ladder.
Can you get 800kV out of this? I highly doubt it. Let's say you get a boost converter to add an order of magnitude to your input voltage and the CW gets 60V... each stage of the ladder adds the input voltage to the output, so 10 stages is still only 600V output. As you increase your input voltage you also increase the boost per stage at the expense of needing all your components being able to handle the increased voltage.
I would imagine that with appropriately rated components (and a lot of them) you could step 6V to 800kV with this kind of approach but your output duty cycle would be ridiculous and the thing would be rather big. A lot of work for one spark. You'd probably also need a flyback to get the input to a level where the CW is practical, and at that point you're best off just getting wall AC and using a transformer to drive a CW or Marx up to that voltage.
As for that thing in the picture... some capacitor stack maybe? Weirdly wound transformer? Leiden jar?