Ground Transient Suppressors

[bphgravity]

Has anyone seen or is using Ground Transient Suppressors? For the second time in one month, I am reading about new technology that is allowing a device to be connected in line with grounding conductors to filter and diminsh transients entering the grounding system.

I am wndering if there is any merit to these products and if a real market exists for this new technology.

 

[physis]

Re: Ground Transient Suppressors

What's the problem they say it's solving? Or reducing?

Edit: I keep leaving words out.

[ July 06, 2005, 07:50 PM: Message edited by: physis ]

 

[hbiss]

Re: Ground Transient Suppressors

Yeah I just saw that today too in EC&M. I believe there was some discussion about this about a year ago here.

Have you got the link to the manufacturer so we can have a look? Seems my magazine disappeared.

-Hal

 

[bphgravity]

Re: Ground Transient Suppressors

I guess the problem is electrostatic energy entering through the grounding system that a typical surge arrestor or TVSS won't see.

There has not been a product to date (according to this particular article) that could provide guaranteed ground continuity due to failing or worn out parts. This product uses a filtering system instead of typical surge suppression methods like an MOV, gas discharge tube or avalanche diodes which allows series connecting of the device with the grounding circuit.

Here's a link: www.9corp.com

Click on "products" then click on "GTT"

 

[physis]

Re: Ground Transient Suppressors

From your description it sounds like BS beacause there are only two way to deal with any kind of current from point A to point B. Series and parallel.

I think I can rule out parallel beacause, what are you going to clamp the current to? Unless that's where it's a new idea.

And as for series. Well. Their thing could fail to, what makes them so special?

But I haven't looked at the link yet. I just thought I'd post what occurs to me before I take a look at it.

 

[physis]

Re: Ground Transient Suppressors

It looks like a coil by the scope traces. There may or may not be something else in it. It might actually benefit from a MOV.

UL recognized technology completely eliminates transients from ground lines.

This from their pitch is just plain not true. I don't know why they'd even say it.

Looking at their data I really can't tell much. I'm not impressed with a 165 volt spike. Big deal. I did think the 6 uf of capacitors was cool. I can't tell what the response time is.

I'm sure it's a fine product. But if their were anything ground breaking going on those scope images would show something a little more meaningful.

As far as ground filtering, it couldn't hurt. But most of the times I've seen someone trying to solve something with ground filtering it was because of some shortcoming in something else. Not that a clean ground wouldn't be nice. These kind of things are usually going after noise spikes like you get when you open a big ole motor contactor. They can be many thousands of volts and ramp times in nanoseconds. Fortunately they usually don't have a lot of energy and they're pretty volnerable to inductance. Power supply transformers do a pretty good job of filtering a lot of that.

As far as the static angle I don't know a whole bunch about it. It's one of the subjects on my agenda though.

Edit: I rembered the capacitance wrong. The 900 uf. I was thinking it 6 f actually. 900 uf isn't cool.

[ July 08, 2005, 06:58 PM: Message edited by: physis ]

 

[physis]

Re: Ground Transient Suppressors

I just blew up the specs so I can read the values on the scopes. There is more stuff than a coil in there and it's a goofy responce, like a notch filter. I checked the math for their 600 watt transient and I get something like 60 watts total and almost all of that went into the 7.5 Ohm resister and not through their device. That's taking their word for the 20 ms. duration.

I didn't recheck my math though or verify that my formula's right but I don't think I missed.