Yes, both the circuits (half wave and full wave) that mkdutchman posted will give 170VDC if fed with 120VAC.
Um...yes, but that's not the whole story
All other things being equal the half wave rectifier will give only half the power and filtered voltage of the full wave rectifier, if I understand correctly
Let me resort to reason and logic
First, some term definitions
RMS=root mean square, the power, rated in DC, that the AC delivers. For example 120V RMS AC will deliver the same amount of power that 120 DC will
Vpp=voltage peak to peak, the distance in volts between the negative peak and positive peak on an AC waveform if viewed on an 'oscope
Power=the power delivered to the circuit
Voltage and current is constantly changing in AC, so power to the load is constantly changing, that's why we need RMS
Now look at this wiki image again
The half wave rectifier
eliminates half the waveform, (either the positive or negative component) so you only get half the power that you had in the original waveform AND if you want pure DC you will have to filter the heck out of it as compared to full wave
Now if we look at the full wave rectifier
it doesn't eliminate the waveform, it makes the components ALL (in this case) positive. So you have the full power available in the rectified waveform (discounting rectified losses) that you had in the original waveform
Now some calculations
this formula
is used for a pure AC waveform.
let's look at common 60Hz AC
Common AC is rated at 110/120V, but keep in mind that is it's RMS value. Looking at the formula above we do this
RMS=110
the square root of 2 = aprox 1.414
so 110 x 1.414 = approx 155
so Vpeak = approx 155
now Vpeak is
only one side of the waveform. In other words, a load will see the voltage climb from zero up to 155+ then go back to zero and continue on down to 155- So the total voltage swing that your load will see is 155+155=310volts
Now back to our rectifier
The half wave will eliminate one of those 155 sides as will the full wave. BUT the difference is that the full wave will put the 155 side that it eliminates onto the side that it does not eliminate. Vpeak will stay the same. What will not stay the same is the
power and the
filtered voltage. If you filter the output from the half wave rectifier down to pure DC you will only get half the power and voltage that you get with the full wave rectifier because only half the waveform is being utilized
Now, if I need to eat crow on any of this please enlighten me. It would be too bad to have to go through life with an errornous opinion just because no one bothered to point out my mistakes
<dubiously eyes nearest cawing crow and thinks about asking jens for his crow recipe>