Electronic – 3.3mF 100V Capacitor charging circuit

capacitor

I'm searching for a -simple- charging circuit for a 3.3 mF 100 V capacitor details here.

The input voltage is 60~80VDC.

Any suggestions?

Edit #1

If I connect the cap directly with no charging circuit, it draws a lot of current which make the fuse of our power supply to switch off the supply. We limit the current to 2 Amperes and the fuse disconnects the supply. Maximum current supported by the circuit before this capacitor is 250mA, so I want to limit the charging current below that level

Best Answer

Fuse blowing during capacitor charging can be prevented by using a "slow blow" fuse which tolerates moest overcurrent peaks of say 5x rated value for a second or so but which blows much more rapidly under heavier overloads. Getting the right balance between allowable overload and good protection can be an interesting exercise.

Slow Blow Fuses:

A slow blow fuse will take seconds to minutes to "blow" at 2 X its rated current but will typically blow in 10's of mS at 10x rated current and in under 1 mS at 100 x rated current. Exact current time profile will vary with brand and type. This time delay effect is usually but not always achieved by giving the fuse "thermal inertia" and by controlling the cooling available to the fusible element.

The graph below shows the current versus time profile for Littefuse HF461 fuses.
This is NOT the cheapest slow-blow fuse available. They can be purchased for rather less that the $1.50/10 or so per fuse that these cost, but these have a good data sheet to show you what you can expect. (Or hope to expect).

Below it can be seen that the 0.5A version will blow in about
20 seconds at 1A (2 X load)
0.6 s at 2A (4X overload) 50 ms at 5A (10X overload) Under 10 mS at 10A
Under 1 mS at 30A

In the case in question a 2A fuse with a 6A load should blow in 1 to 2 seconds.

These results will depend to some extent on temperature, mounting, enclosure and which way the wind is blowing (in some cases literally so) but will serve as a guide which should be good enough..

enter image description here Slow Blow fuses.jpg


Start your Digikey search here

Click on SlowBlow and then set filters

Here is a $US0.20/10 offering
bel 5ST / 5 STP series

Also provide a good data table:
Note the very long periods when Iin is not much > Irated.

enter image description here