A General-Purpose Three-Phase DC-DC Converter Building Block for Fuel Cell Applications

Multiphase dc-dc converters allow current sharing among phases and high-frequency ripple cancellation and are very desirable for low-voltage high-power fuel cell applications. In this paper, a versatile three-phase dc-dc converter circuit as a building block is proposed for different output voltage levels including non-isolated 48 V for telecom and isolated 400 V for subsequent stage dc-ac inverter applications. For either type of application, the proposed three-phase converter circuit is controlled by the same complementary gating control that allows synchronous rectification for the non-isolated version and zero- voltage soft switching for the isolated version. Two sets of 5-kW converters have been built and tested with a fuel cell simulator. Experimental results are given to show the superiority of the efficiency performance in two different applications.

[1]  Jih-Sheng Lai,et al.  Modeling and control of a novel six-leg three-phase high-power converter for low voltage fuel cell applications , 2004, 2004 IEEE 35th Annual Power Electronics Specialists Conference (IEEE Cat. No.04CH37551).

[2]  Jih-Sheng Lai,et al.  A novel three-phase high-power soft-switched DC/DC converter for low-voltage fuel cell applications , 2005 .

[3]  I. Barbi,et al.  A three-phase ZVS PWM DC/DC converter with asymmetrical duty cycle for high power applications , 2003, IEEE 34th Annual Conference on Power Electronics Specialist, 2003. PESC '03..

[4]  Robert W. Erickson,et al.  Buck-boost PWM converters having two independently controlled switches , 2001, 2001 IEEE 32nd Annual Power Electronics Specialists Conference (IEEE Cat. No.01CH37230).

[5]  Jih-Sheng Lai,et al.  Multiphase Isolated DC-DC Converters for Low-Voltage High-Power Fuel Cell Applications , 2007, APEC 07 - Twenty-Second Annual IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition.

[6]  D.M. Divan,et al.  A three-phase soft-switched high power density DC/DC converter for high power applications , 1988, Conference Record of the 1988 IEEE Industry Applications Society Annual Meeting.

[7]  P.D. Ziogas,et al.  Analysis and design of a three-phase offline DC-DC converter with high frequency isolation , 1988, Conference Record of the 1988 IEEE Industry Applications Society Annual Meeting.