Fuel cells (FC) are electrochemical devices that directly convert the chemical energy of a fuel into electricity. Power systems based on proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) technology have been the object of increasing attention in recent years as they appear very promising in both stationary and mobile applications due to their high efficiency, low operating temperature allowing fast startup, high power density, solid electrolyte, long cell and stack life, low corrosion, excellent dynamic response with respect to the other FCs, and nonpolluting emissions to the environment if the hydrogen is obtained from renewable sources. The output-voltage characteristic in a PEMFC is limited by the mechanical devices which are used for regulating the air flow in its cathode, the hydrogen flow in its anode, its inner temperature, and the humidity of the air supplied to it. Usually, the FC time constants are dominated by the fuel delivery system, in particular by the slow dynamics of the compressor responsible for supplying the oxygen. As a consequence, a fast load transient demand could cause a high voltage drop in a short time known as oxygen starvation phenomenon that is harmful for the FC. Thus, FCs are considered as a slow dynamic response equipment with respect to the load transient requirements. Therefore, batteries, ultracapacitors or other auxiliary power sources are needed to support the operation of the FC in order to ensure a fast response to any load power transient. The resulting systems, known as FC hybrid systems, can limit the slope of the current or the power generated by the FC with the use of current-controlled dc-dc converters. In this way, the reactant gas starvation phenomena can be avoided and the system can operate with higher efficiency. The purpose of this thesis is the design of a DC-DC converter suitable to interconnect all the different elements in a PEMFC-hybrid 48-V DC bus. Since the converter could be placed between elements with very different voltage levels, a buck-boost structure has been selected. Especially to fulfill the low ripple requirements of the PEMFCs, but also those of the auxiliary storage elements and loads, our structure has inductors in series at both its input and its output. Magnetically coupling these inductors and adding a damping network to its intermediate capacitor we have designed an easily controllable converter with second-order-buck-like dominant dynamics. This new proposed topology has high efficiency and wide bandwidth acting either as a voltage or as a current regulator. The magnetic coupling allows to control with similar performances the input or the output inductor currents. This characteristic is very useful because the designed current-controlled converter is able to withstand shortcircuits at its output and, when connected to the FC, it facilitates to regulate the current extracted from the FC to avoid the oxygen starvation phenomenon. Testing in a safe way the converter connected to the FC required to build an FC simulator that was subsequently improved by developing an emulator that offered real-time processing and oxygen-starvation indication. To study the developed converters and emulators with different brands of PEMFCs it was necessary to reactivate long-time inactive Palcan FCs. Since the results provided by the manual reactivation procedure were unsatisfactory, an automatic reactivation system has been developed as a complementary study of the thesis. / En esta tesis se avanzo en el diseño de un bus DC de 48 V que utiliza como elemento principal de generación de energía eléctrica una pila de combustible. Debido a que la dinámica de las pilas de combustible están limitadas por sus elementos mecánicos auxiliares de control una variación rápida de una carga conectada a ella puede ocasionar daños. Es por esto que es necesario utilizar elementos almacenadores de energía que puedan suministrar estas rápidas variaciones de carga y convertidores para que gestionen de una forma controlada la potencia del bus DC. Durante la realización de pruebas de los convertidores es de gran importancia utilizar emuladores o simuladores de pilas de combustibles, esto nos permite de una forma económica y segura realizar pruebas criticas antes de conectar los convertidores a la pila. Adicionalmente una nueva topologia de convertidor fue presentada y ésta gestionará la potencia en el bus

published_or_final_version / Electrical Engineering / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

An overview of DC/DC converters is given. The operation of the buck converter and the series resonant converter is explained. The advantages and disadvantages of series, parallel, and series-parallel resonant circuits are examined. In addition, the advantages and disadvantages of the clamped series resonant converter when compared to the buck converter are discussed. Both circuits are simulated on the general circuit simulation program SPICE. Lab measurements taken for the series resonant converter are compared to the simulated results from SPICE.

The role of high/medium power bidirectional DC-DC converters in the next generation of multi-terminal high voltage DC transmission networks is to enable intercontinental bulk power transfer. This is encouraged by increased DC-DC converter functionalities such as DC voltage stepping/matching, DC line tapping, power flow regulation, bidirectional power flow control, and DC fault isolation. In this work, a bidirectional dual active bridge (DAB) DC-DC converter is selected to pursue such functionalities, due to its desirable features for use in high power applications. This includes galvanic isolation, fast power reversal, high power density, buck/boost operation, possibility of high stepping ratio of conversion and its inherent fault isolation capability without a need for a very fast controller. However, increased reactive power and reduced soft switching range are the main limitations of DAB for applications involving high voltage conversion ratios. Reactive power circulation increases the converter RMS current leading to an increase in conduction losses especially in high power applications. Therefore, a novel triple phase shift (TPS) control algorithm that minimises the total reactive power is proposed to enhance the performance of the DC-DC converter. The algorithm iteratively searches for TPS control variables that satisfy the desired active power flow while selecting the operating mode(s) with minimum reactive power consumption. In addition, a complete DAB converter behaviour under TPS control which has not been studied in the literature before is performed for both power flow directions. Steady state analysis is undertaken for each mode by computing exact expressions for modes power transfer and range (to characterise mode boundary) without fundamental frequency assumption. A new definition of reactive power consumption based on converter total inductance is proposed and a detailed constraint for zero voltage switching (ZVS) is also presented. Moreover, it is shown that all known DAB phase shift modulation techniques including conventional, dual and extended phase shift, represent special cases of TPS, therefore the presented analysis provides a generalised theory for all phase shift based modulation techniques. To scale the converter to higher power level, a modular DAB converter is implemented with a development of power sharing controllers that utilise TPS modulation scheme. The focus is to ensure stable operation of the DAB modules in both power flow directions in the presence parametric mismatches. The reactive power minimisation algorithm and a new DC fault management mechanism are embedded within the proposed controllers. Detailed simulation and experimentation are used to validate the proposed algorithm and power sharing controllers.

Since 2002, the department of electricity at Uppsala university has pushed the Lysekil project. The project has a number of wave energy converters installed in the sea southwest of Lysekil. The purpose of this work is to design, build and test a DC-DC converter, which will later be used as a necessary part of the grid connection of a wave energy converter. Since a wave energy converter does not generate electricity at a constant frequency, it is not possible to use a gearbox. Instead, power is rectified and, if there are several wave power energy converters, are put together with the others before it is inverted and transformed to the correct voltage level, and finally connected to the grid [1]. The designed DC-DC converter is a converter of the type "inverting buck-boost", i.e. a converter that can both lower and raise the voltage, and inverts the polarity of the output. Although the voltage in normal circumstances will only be increased, the simulations showed that the efficiency and cost of components did not differ much between a "boost" and "buck-boost" converter, thus considered flexibility to be able to lower the voltage if needed. The project also includes a small part to the construction of a bridge rectifier, but as the most difficult moment in the project is the DC-DC converter, the greatest focus will be there.

In this thesis, coupled inductors have been applied to multiphase DC-DC converters. Detailed analysis has been done to investigate the benefits of directly coupled inductors and inversely coupled inductors, compared to conventional uncoupled inductors. In general, coupled inductors for multiphase DC-DC converters have inherent benefits such as excellent current sharing characteristics, immunity to component tolerance and reduction in current control complexity. Specifically, by employing directly coupled inductors for multiphase DC-DC converters, overall current ripple can be effectively reduced, compared to that of uncoupled inductors. For inversely coupled inductors, phase current ripple can be reduced if operating points and coupling coefficients are carefully chosen. As for small-signal characteristics, inversely coupled inductors have the advantages of broadening the bandwidth of multiphase DC-DC converters and being more immune to load variation at low frequencies. On the other hand, directly coupled inductors have the benefit of low sensitivity to input variation at high frequencies. In addition, the proposed new structure for multiphase DC-DC converters has excellent current sharing performance and reduced current ripple. Computer simulations have been done and hardware prototypes have been built to validate the concepts.

Thesis (M.S.)--California Polytechnic State University, 2009. / Mode of access: Internet. Title from PDF title page; viewed on Jan. 6, 2010. Major professor: Taufik. "Presented to the faculty of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo." "In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree [of] Master of Science in Electrical Engineering." "December 2009." Includes bibliographical references (p. 74).

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 166-182).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 1988. / Xeroc copy of typescript. Also availalbe in microfilm.

published_or_final_version / Electrical and Electronic Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy