Development of an equivalent circuit model of a fuel cell to evaluate the effects of inverter ripple current

Author

Choi, Woojin ; Enjeti, Prasad N. ; Howze, Jo W.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., Texas A&M Univ., College Station, TX, USA

Volume

1

fYear

2004

fDate

2004

Firstpage

355

Abstract

In this paper an impedance model of the proton exchange membrane fuel cell stack (PEMFCS) is proposed. The proposed study employs an equivalent circuit of the PEMFCS derived by frequency response analysis (FRA) technique. An equivalent circuit for the fuel cell stack is developed to evaluate the effects of ripple currents generated by the power-conditioning unit. The calculated results are then verified by means of experiments on three commercially available fuel cells: Avista Labs SR-12 (500 W), Ballard Nexa (1.2 kW) and BCS-Tech (300 W) PEMFC system. The relationship between ripple current and fuel cell performance: such as power loss and fuel consumption is investigated. Experimental results show that the ripple current can contribute up to 10% reduction in the available output power.

Keywords

electric impedance; equivalent circuits; frequency response; invertors; proton exchange membrane fuel cells; 1.2 kW; 300 W; 500 W; Avista Labs SR-12; BCS-Tech; Ballard Nexa; equivalent circuit model; frequency response analysis technique; fuel consumption; impedance model; inverter ripple current; power loss; power reduction; power-conditioning unit; proton exchange membrane fuel cell stack; Biomembranes; Equivalent circuits; Frequency response; Fuel cells; Impedance; Inverters; Performance loss; Power generation; Protons; US Department of Transportation;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition, 2004. APEC '04. Nineteenth Annual IEEE

Print_ISBN

0-7803-8269-2

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/APEC.2004.1295834

Filename

1295834