Low cost high efficiency DC-DC converter for fuel cell powered auxiliary power unit of a heavy vehicle

In this paper, a new dc-dc converter for solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) powered auxiliary power unit (APU) is proposed. The proposed converter does not consider the leakage inductance of the transformer as a parasite and uses it for energy transfer, thus avoiding problems of low efficiency and difficulty in control, caused by leakage inductance. The need for a separate filter inductor is also eliminated. Soft switching is done for some of the switches of the proposed converter, thereby further increasing the efficiency of the converter. Thus, the achieved low cost and high efficiency of the proposed converter make it suitable for SOFC powered APU applications. Simulation and experimental results are presented to verify the proposed dc-dc converter. The achieved cost and efficiency of the prototype are 50.8$/kW and 90%, respectively

[1]  F.Z. Peng,et al.  Low cost fuel cell inverter system for residential power generation , 2004, Nineteenth Annual IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition, 2004. APEC '04..

[2]  Jih-Sheng Lai,et al.  Design considerations for a 48 V fuel cell to split single phase inverter system with ultracapacitor energy storage , 2002, 2002 IEEE 33rd Annual IEEE Power Electronics Specialists Conference. Proceedings (Cat. No.02CH37289).

[3]  Georg Götz,et al.  Fuel Cell Auxiliary Power Unit - Innovation for the Electric Supply of Passenger Cars ? , 2000 .

[4]  M. Farooque,et al.  Fuel cells-the clean and efficient power generators , 2001, Proc. IEEE.

[5]  Daniel W. Hart,et al.  Introduction to Power Electronics , 1996 .

[6]  Hui Li,et al.  A natural ZVS medium-power bidirectional DC-DC converter with minimum number of devices , 2001 .

[7]  M. C. Williams.  Fuel cells and the world energy future , 2001, 2001 Power Engineering Society Summer Meeting. Conference Proceedings (Cat. No.01CH37262).