Efficient design of boost converters for fuel cells

Fuel Cells (FCs) are part of the most promising and environmentally friendly technologies that have attracted the attention of both industrial and basic research in the recent years. Power conversion systems should be developed in order to apply FCs on different applications such as electric vehicles and meet variable power demands. The produced voltage and current at the FC output is not constant. In most typical applications the FC feeds a boost converter which must be properly designed. In this paper, the nonlinear dynamics of the FC are combined with the non-smooth properties of the DC-DC converter resulting in a complicated, nonlinear, 3rd order piece-wise smooth model which is used for the proper design of the converter. The results clearly show that the combined system has a stable and fast response. Using Filippov´s theory the stability of the system is guaranteed even when the inductance is reduced which makes the overall system more efficient, cheaper and lighter.