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What size resistor should I use to bleed a capacitor?
What size resistor should I use to bleed a 66000uf capacitor at 65V. It will be connected through a relay to bleed only when the power is off.
4 Answers
- billrussell42Lv 71 decade agoFavorite Answer
depends on how quickly you want to bleed off the charge.
If you use a 1kΩ resistor, it will bleed off 60% of the charge every 1kΩ x 66000µf = 66 seconds, quite slow.
100Ω gets you 6.6 seconds.
But the power gets significant as the resistor gets smaller. At 65v The 100Ω resistor will dissipate 42 watts for a brief time, you will need a power resistor, perhaps 20 watts.
But if you went to 10Ω to get the discharge to less than a second, you will dissipate 420 watts briefly, and would want a BIG power resistor. Also your relay in this case has to switch 7 amps without damage.
- Anonymous1 decade ago
Good rule is to simply use a very large resistor (not physical size) like 50,000 ohms or more. This will keep the amps very low and thus keep the heat low. I'm not sure how long the power will be off to allow bleeding. If it needs to bleed quickly, you'll need to calculate the time and find a compromise between that and the heat produced.
- lareLv 71 decade ago
NEC specifies how fast capacitors have to be bled down to non-lethal voltage (about 40 volts). it is a pretty short time but will be less than one RC time constant from 65 volts. If the aparatus cannot do this, then it cannot be UL listed. The use of a relay may also conflict with code/UL requirements as safety devices normally have to be failsafe.
- LeAnneLv 71 decade ago
Depends entirely on how fast you want to neutralize the capacitor. Just be sure to use a resister of sufficient wattage to dissipate the heat - easily calculated by Ohm's Law.