Design and development of a 200 W converter for phosphoric acid fuel cells
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Date
2013-03
Authors
Kuyula, Christian Kinsala
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
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Abstract
“If we think oil is a problem now, just wait 20 years. It’ll be a nightmare.” —
Jeremy Rifkin, Foundation of Economic Trends, Washington, D.C., August 2003.
This statement harmonises with the reality that human civilisation faces today. As a
result, humankind has been forced to look for alternatives to fossil fuels. Among
possible solutions, fuel cell (FC) technology has received a lot of attention because
of its potential to generate clean energy.
Fuel cells have the advantage that they can be used in remote telecommunication
sites with no grid connectivity as the majority of telecommunication equipment
operates from a DC voltage supply. Power plants based on phosphoric acid fuel cell
(PAFC) have been installed worldwide supplying urban areas, shopping centres and
medical facilities with electricity, heat and hot water. Although these are facts
regarding large scale power plants for on-site use, portable units have been explored
as well. Like any other fuel cell, the PAFC output power is highly unregulated
leading to a drastic drop in the output voltage with changing load value. Therefore,
various DC–DC converter topologies with a wide range of input voltages can be used
to regulate the fuel cell voltage to a required DC load.
An interleaved synchronous buck converter intended for efficiently stepping down
the energy generated by a PAFC was designed and developed. The design is based
on the National Semiconductor LM5119 IC. A LM5119 evaluation board was
redesigned to meet the requirements for the application. The measurements were
performed and it was found that the converter achieved the expectations. The results
showed that the converter efficiently stepped down a wide range of input voltages
(22 to 46 V) to a regulated 13.8 V while achieving a 93 percent efficiency. The
conclusions reached and recommendations for future research are presented.
Description
M. Tech. (Engineering: Electrical, Department Electronic Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Technology), Vaal University of Technology,
Keywords
Fuel cells, Telecommunication equipment, Clean energy, Interleaved synchronous buck converter