水銀整流器

介紹

A mercury arc valve (mercury vapor rectifier) is a type of electrical rectifier which converts alternating current into direct current. Rectifiers of this type were used in electric motor power supplies for industry, in electric railways, streetcars and diesel-electric locomotives. They also found use in static inverter stations and as rectifiers for high-voltage direct current power transmission. Mercury arc rectifiers were invented by Peter Cooper Hewitt in 1902 and further developed throughout the 1920s and 1930s by researchers in both Europe and North America. Before the advent of solid-state devices, mercury arc rectifiers were one of the more efficient rectifiers. By 1975, high-voltage solid state devices such as the silicon diode and thyristor made the mercury arc rectifier obsolete even in high-voltage DC applications.