Research Article Open Access

CONTROL OF THE PORTABLE FUEL CELL CHARGER USING CUK CONVERTER

Abstract

As power consumption of portable electronic equipment rapidly increases; the need of chargers using fuel cell which has higher energy density than that of secondary battery is raised. Most chargers developed so far are mainly buck-type converters, however, if fuel cell is used the battery should be charged with an increased voltage level through boost-type converter. In addition, unlike resistive load if batteries are controlled by general method, they induce large ripple current and have bad influence on the efficiency and life cycle of the batteries. Therefore, the selection of appropriate topology and control method is very important. In this paper a method of control for portable fuel-cell charger using small PEM (Proton Exchange Membrane) fuel cell stack and Cuk converter is proposed and the feasibility of it is verified through the experiments.

Tae-Hoon Kim, Nguyen Van Sang, and Woojin Choi

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