Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitors
RAD Electric Int. | Sales representative of Capacitors, Fuses, Encoders, Diodes, Thyristors, Resistors
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It is generally found that the driver is the weakest part within a LED luminaire. According to the field test results of DoE, USA, more than 70% of the failures of tested LED luminaires come from their driver failures. Such high failure rate is caused by several major reasons:
- limitation of cost
- harsh working conditions
- long expected lifetime
That makes the reliability issue of the driver needs to be carefully examined for a LED luminaire. s revealed in many researches, the electrolytic capacitor is considered as the weakest component of many power electronics. Therefore, many researchers regard the lifetime of the electrolytic capacitor as the lifetime of the driver. According to literatures, the output smoothing electrolytic capacitors have the highest rate of failure and account for over 50% of the failures in switch mode power supplies. Thus, reliability assessment of the electrolytic capacitor is a significant issue for reliability of LED drivers and LED luminaires.
Aluminum electrolytic capacitors are divided into three subfamilies by the type of electrolyte:
- non-solid (liquid, wet) aluminum electrolytic capacitors,
- solid manganese dioxide aluminum electrolytic capacitors, and
- solid polymer aluminium electrolytic capacitors.
Due to their relatively high capacitance values aluminum electrolytic capacitors have low impedance values even at lower frequencies like mains frequency. They are typically used in power supplies, switched-mode power supplies and DC-DC converters for smoothing and buffering rectified DC voltages in many electronic devices as well as in industrial power supplies and frequency converters as DC link capacitors for drives, inverters for photovoltaic, and converters in wind power plants. Special types are used for energy storage, for example in photoflash or strobe applications or for frequency coupling in audio applications.
Keneil is an Italian factory with over 35 years of experience in producing electrolytic aluminum capacitors. Products range from screw terminal capacitors to snap terminals. All capacitors meet international standards CECC, DIN, IEC, and ISO 9001 quality certification.