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The PEM fuel cell system with DC/DC boost converter: Design, modeling and
simulation
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Abstract—The fuel cells are considered as one of the most the form of cascaded series & parallel connection.
promising devices for standalone/grid connected distributed Normally the fuel cell stack available in the market gives
generations (DGs) due to its cleanliness, modularity and operating voltage in the range of 26V to 50V. These
higher potential capability. The barriers in the widespread stacks are now widely used in portable devices,
use of fuel cells are their slow response for sudden load
changes and higher installation cost. In this paper a
automotive industry, residential and stationary power
simulation study of dynamic behavior of NexaTM 1.2kW needs but unsuitable for abrupt load changes due to slow
PEM fuel cell with DC/DC boost converter is carried out for response of underlying electrochemical and
compact design of PCU. The necessity for the requirement thermodynamic processes.
of boost converter compared with cascaded two stack fuel In literature [5]-[7], many fuel cell models are
cell model is also addressed. Moreover the performance of developed based on underlying thermodynamic and
the simple DC/DC boost converter as power modulator for electrochemical equations. How ever in most of the
NexaTM 1.2kW PEM fuel cell model is analyzed for varying models the effect of change in temperatures and fuel
loads in order to control power flow for enhanced pressures is not taken into account. As the fuel pressure
performance.
or temperature increases the power density of the fuel cell
Index Terms—DC/DC Converter, Distributed generation, stack also goes up for increasing loads [8], [9]. In reality,
PEM fuel cell, PI controller. the fuel cell variants differ in terms of characteristics,
materials, construction and their application suitability.
I. INTRODUCTION To get better understanding of the characteristics and
responses of fuel cell in a system, an accurate desktop
The availability of existing central power generation is fuel cell model needs to be developed in order to design
not sufficient to meet the growing energy demands. Many efficient & accurate power electronics interface. Apart
private sectors invest huge money to meet out their from the models based on Thermodynamic and
contingent loads under power cut and also to cater peak electrochemical equations, an improved parametric model
load demand locally using conventional diesel generators. based on circuit simulator PSpice for a class of PEM fuel
The use of conventional means of power sources are cell is also developed to analyze its dynamic behavior for
getting limited due to their inefficient and untidy changes against temperature [10].
operation. The Private sectors and Utilities are now The DC-DC Converter is an integral part of fuel cell
concentrating on green power technologies with accrued power conditioning unit, it is therefore this paper intends
benefits on account of their cleanliness, modularity, high to present modeling of fuel cell as well as of DC/DC
efficiency & reliability. Among the different green power Converter. The design of DC/DC converter and their
technologies e.g. wind power, photovoltaic, micro controller plays an important role to control power
turbine, & fuel cells, the fuel cell based distributed regulation particularly for a common DC bus. The boost
generation is considered as one of the most promising converter offers higher efficiency and less component
technology due to high operating efficiency (40-60%), counts compared to other DC/DC converters topologies
reliability and higher potential capability [1],[2]. The like push pull, half bride and full bridge etc. which could
Distributed Generation in fact offers enhanced voltage possibly be used to interface fuel cell system to the load.
support, reduced transmission & distribution losses, Several such topologies of DC/DC converters based on
improved reliability & power quality [3]. The fuel cell their components count, advantages & disadvantages are
based distributed generation can be placed anywhere in discussed and compared [11].
the system to upgrade system integrity, reliability and If the available fuel cell generation is not sufficient to
efficiency. meet the sustainable load demand, there is a need of
The PEM fuel cell technology is the best candidate for additional energy storage device such as battery,
residential and commercial applications due to low capacitors and ultra capacitors to meet the peak power
operating temperature, quick start up and high power demands. Among these energy storage devices, the ultra
density [4]. The open circuit voltage of the single cell is capacitors can be placed at the dc link without any
in the range of 0.8-1.2V. To get higher operating voltage additional circuits because it has long life and
& power; many such cells are stacked and connected in maintenance free. But an energy storage e.g. Battery
requires additional control circuit for the bidirectional
A. Kirubakaran, Research Scholar is with the Department of DC/DC power flow operations during charging and
Electrical Engineering, Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology, discharging conditions. This increases the cost of the
Bhopal-462051, India (Email: a_kiruba81@rediffmail.com).
system and reduces life span and reliability. The
157
RT ⎛I ⎞
Vact = N o . .ln ⎜ dc ⎟ (7)
2α F ⎝ I0 ⎠
158
36
L D
34
32
30
28 FC SW Vdc Load
Cdc
26
24
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Fuel Cell Stack Current (A)
PWM Firing
Fig. 4. Measured Output Characteristics of the Nexa TM Pulse Generator
The Fig. 5 shows the I-V characteristics of PEM fuel
Controller
cell for 2 stacks. It is observed that the fuel cell can be Modulating
operated safely in the linear range of voltages from 40V Signal
to 71V as compared to its operation from 26V to 36V (for Fig. 6. Typical structure of DC-DC boost converter with feedback
control.
single stack) with almost double power for same current
as compared to single stack operation. But the cost of the + VL -
two stack fuel cell has also increased two fold. Therefore L
IL IC IL
in this paper a simple DC/DC boost converter is used to Iin +
boost the output voltage of the fuel cell system due to its Vin C VC R Vo
superiority of higher efficiency and simplicity in control. -
100
90
60
+ VL -
50
40
L
IL IC IL
30
Iin +
20
Vin C VC
10 R Vo
-
0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110
d( 1 − d )2 RTs
Current Ripple= (17)
L
dT
Voltage Ripple= s (18)
RC
TABLE I
BOOST CONVERTER PARAMETERS
Parameters Values
Current ripple 3%
Voltage ripple 0.5%
L 4.8mH
C 1200 µ F
Fs 20KHz Fig. 10. Fuel cell terminal voltage and current for changes in load.
B. Control Strategy
In this work a simple feedback PI controller is used to
maintain a constant bus voltage of 80V in converter
output, irrespective of variations in load and fuel cell
terminal voltage. The PI controller minimizes steady state
error to zero. The process of sensing the control variable
and the transformation of dimensionless measured
quantities ( V d (t ), V d (t ), I d (t ) ) compared with reference
o fc o
signals are shown in Fig.9 [19]. The change in duty
cycles for varying load is obtained by optimizing the
suitable PI parameter values of the voltage controller and
current controller.
d
Vref Ve Voltage ge I *L Ie Current PWM pulse
+ +
−
Controller − Controller generator
To Swit
V d (t ) V d (t ) I d (t )
o fc o
Modulating
1/ Vo, ref 1/Vfc,ref 1/ Io,ref Signal Fig. 11. Converter output power and voltage for changes in load.
Vo (t ) V fc (t ) Io (t )
It is observed that the design of simple boost converter
Fig. 9 Closed loop control block for PWM pulse generator. with PI controller gives better performance for changes in
load without the use of any storage devices. Hence, for
IV. SIMULATION RESULTS low power applications the design of simple boost
converter gives better performance for standalone/grid
From the above discussion it is observed that the single connected applications. However the usage of backup
stack fuel cells can be operated with in the permissible energy storage devices like batteries, capacitors and ultra
range of 26V to 36V for constant fuel input to maintain capacitor banks plays an important role to protect the FC
the stability of the system. To regulate the fuel cell output system during start up.
voltages and to improve the performance of the FC
system, a simple boost converter interfaced with PEM
V. CONCLUSION
fuel cell is simulated in MATLAB/Simulink
environment. Fig.10 shows changes in fuel cell terminal This paper presents a study of dynamic behavior of
voltage and current for varying loads. It is observed that 1.2kW NexaTM PEM fuel cell. The dynamic limitations of
for load changes from 600W to 1100W instantaneously, the single stack and double stack fuel cell model are
the fuel cell voltage and current takes about 50ms to analyzed based on their dynamic behavior of
70ms to reach a new steady state. Fig. 11 demonstrates characteristic curves. To regulate the fuel cell terminal
the effect of the power control and dc link voltage for the voltages a simple DC/DC boost converter is interfaced
changes in load current approximately from 20A to 44A. with PEM fuel cell system. It is observed that the design
of simple DC/DC boost converter gives better
performance for varying loads thereby increasing its life
span. The optimized parameters of PI controllers gives
better response curve to control the power flow through
Fuel Cells.
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161