Comparaison analysis of high voltage ratio low input current ripple floating interleaving boost converters for fuel cell applications

In the last few years, fuel cells have gained more interest as a vehicular on-board clean source of energy. The fuel cell is a low-voltage current intensive source, it produces electricity directly from hydrogen and oxygen. Fuel cells combined in high voltage stack can be used in a fuel cell electric vehicle (FCEV). The key issue in FCEV´s powertrain is to interface a non-linear fuel cell stack with the vehicle main dc-bus. In FCEV, volume, weight, cost and efficiency of the dc-dc converter are the major constraints. In this paper new dc-dc converter topologies called floating-interleaving boost converters (FIBC) will be presented. These topologies will be compared to the conventional boost converter from inductor and capacitor volume and weight, input current ripple, and efficiency point of view. This analysis will permit to choose the most suitable topology among the proposed topologies responding to the specified constraints.