Re: Series capacitance and how it affects a tank capacitor.

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Malcolm Watts" <m.j.watts-at-massey.ac.nz> 

On 23 Feb 2004, at 11:49, Tesla list wrote:

 > Original poster: "Hydrogen18" <hydrogen18-at-hydrogen18-dot-com>
 >
 > I've been doing alot of research on the capacitors used in a primary
 > tesla circuit, and even built a  rolled capacitor and a saltwater
 > bottle capacitor. Although I cant see myself dishing out big bucks for
 > an MMC for my first tesla coil, I was doing some reading about
 > homemade capacitors and corona. It never occured to me but when placed
 > in series each capacitor sees a reduced voltage across its dielectric.
 > If I took 4 capacitors and placed them in series with a 10 kilavolt 60
 > hz AC charging current would each one only see 2.5 kilavolts, thus
 > eliminating corona almost altogether. The only problem I can see with
 > this is the series resistance of capacitors. How does this affect
 > MMCs, and how would it affect several homemade capacitors in series?

That is exactly why high voltage (multi-kV range) capacitors are
built as series sections. The same philosophy is applied to the
construction of MMCs. For extended foil type capacitors, ESR is not a
major concern.

Malcolm