APPLICATION OF AN INTERLEAVED BOOST CONVERTER FOR FUEL CELL SYSTEMS

A three-phase interleaved boost DC/DC converter is applied for fuel cell systems, of which the operation performance and lifetime are sensitive to its output current ripples. Fuel cells are essential energy sources in sustainable systems since they can convert stored energy in hydrogen to electricity when it is needed, so that they can enhance the robustness and adaptability of renewable energy systems. However, the low voltage of the fuel cells requires to be boosted to a suitable level for the application. Another issue with fuel cells is cell voltage imbalance due to insufficient fuel supply or high output current ripples. To overcome these issues, interleaved boost converters are good solutions to level up the output voltage while reducing the fuel cell output current ripples. Simulation results demonstrate that the interleaved converter effectively reduces the fuel cell current ripple by about 97% compared with fuel cell current ripple of the conventional boost converter. A 200 W three-phase hardware of interleaved boost converter is implemented to evaluate the ripple reduction of converter input current, which is the fuel cell current. The control of the converter is implemented in the real-time microcontroller of TMS320F28379D. A computer-based graphic user interface (GUI) has also been developed for real-time monitoring and controlling the designed interleaved converter, which provides ease of use for the users.