Using polarized capacitors in place of bi/uni/non-polar electrolytic capcitors

[drewt86]

Hi gang,

My name is Drew and while I've been watching EEV on youtube for years, this is my first time on the forum. I'm still learning and recently took on a project to repair a device of mine that stopped working.

After a power supply issue I had with a Presonus Central Station, I decided to order all new caps. There were only 30 on the board and figured it couldn't hurt while I had it apart. Since I'll be receiving the parts on Friday, I came in today to remove the capacitors from the board and document the layout/orientation, etc. As I was desoldering them, I discovered that although they are electrolytics, some of them or nonpolarized. I didn't notice it until I went to look for the minus. My bad, if I had discovered this earlier, I would have replaced it with poly caps.

Here is a spec sheet one type of capacitor on the board in question. http://www.vek-online.de/files/4188/upload/Elektrolyt/CD71H.pdf

The ones on the board are made by the Chang Yang company...and to be clear, I didn't make that name up. That's what they say on them...

Anyway, my question is, is it possible to use a polarized capacitor in place of it? I know you can't go the other way around but this is the first time I've thought of this. Is there something special about how I should orient it? Most of these bipolar caps appear to be filtering outputs of the MC33079 all over the board. Each cap is in series with a 50ohm resistor from the output and ends up at some relays on a different board. Sadly, there is no schematic to be released.

While I've been learning a lot in the past few months, I still have many gaps in my electronics knowledge and I just found one. Any help is appreciated.

[danadak]

Without seeing the schematic , in general. a polar cannot replace a
non polar. Exception is use of two polars used in series, like polarity
connections, eg. + to + or - to -, to create a non polar.


Regards, Dana.

[Zero999]

Yes, use the same value capacitors, connected back-to-back. The capacitance will be half of the original capacitor value.



https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-AC-and-DC-capacitors


http://www.electronicecircuits.com/electronic-circuits/crossover-network