A novel DC-DC multilevel SEPIC converter for PEMFC systems

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A novel DC-DC multilevel SEPIC converter for PEMFC systems
Article in International Journal of Hydrogen Energy · June 2016
DOI: 10.1016/j.ijhydene.2016.06.042
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A novel DC-DC Multilevel SEPIC Converter for PEMFC systems.
Julio Cesar Rosas-Caro1, Victor M. Sanchez2,*, Rene Fabian Vazquez-Bautista3, Luis Javier MoralesMendoza3, Jonathan Carlos Mayo-Maldonado4, Pedro Martin Garcia-Vite5, Romeli Barbosa2
1
Universidad Panamericana UP Campus Guadalajara,
Av. Circunvalacion Poniente #49, CP 45010 Zapopan, Jalisco, Mexico.
2
Depto. Ingeniería, Universidad de Quintana Roo,
Blvd. Bahía s/n Esq. I. Comonfort, 77019, Chetumal, Q. Roo, Mexico.
3
Universidad Veracruzana, Campus Poza Rica,
Av. Venustiano Carranza s/n, C.P. 93396. Poza Rica Ver., Mexico
4
Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey
Av. Eugenio Garza Sada 2501, CP 64849 Monterrey, N.L., Mexico
5
Universidad Politecnica de Altamira
Nvo. Libramiento Altamira Km 3, Sta. Amalia, CP 89602, Altamira, Tamps. Mexico
*Corresponding author: Tel.: +52 983 50300, Fax: +52 983 8329656; E-mail address: vicsan.huerta@gmail.com
(Victor M. Sanchez).
Abstract
Electrical power processing is an essential sub-system of Proton exchange membrane fuel cell PEMFC systems, it is
usually composed by a dc-dc converter for customizing the electrical energy before feeding the load, the SingleEnded Primary-Inductor Converter or simply SEPIC, is one of the converters with continuous input current, and it
has been applied to a variety of industrial applications. This work explores the capability of the traditional dc-dc
SEPIC to achieve high voltage gain by combining the converter with a diode-capacitor voltage multiplier and their
applications to PEMFC systems. The continuous input current and high voltage gain is adequate for the power
conditioning in fuel cell systems. For the discussed application, the voltage gain is regulated by PWM and may be
extended by increasing the diode-capacitor multiplier structure. Main characteristics of the converter are: continuous
input current, high-voltage gain, avoiding the use of extreme duty cycles and transformers, low voltage stresses in
the power switches, besides the converter topology only employs a switch controlled and two inductors which allows
a relatively simple implementation. Simulation and experimental results are provided to verify the theoretical
analysis and proof of the operating principle for the dc-dc power converter proposed
Keywords: DC-DC converter, voltage multilevel, high voltage gain.
1. Introduction
For several renewable energy applications such as PEMFC systems, the voltage generated by the power source has to
be customized to feed the load or get connected to another converter such as a grid-tie inverter, this power
customization is usually performed by a dc-dc converter [1-3].
The main challenges in the design of a power conditioning system for FCs, it is to provide a high gain voltage as well
as an input current with a low ripple. The voltage generated by the PEMFC system has to be customized to feed the
load or get connected to another converter such as a grid-tie inverter, this power customization is usually performed
by a dc-dc converter [1-3].
The DC voltage produced by a fuel cell ranges between 50-100% of their nominal value as well as it has a low
magnitude too. Typically, DC-DC converters based on high frequency transformers are commonly used in order to
provide a voltage gain. However, power transformers increase the cost and size of the power conditioning stage [4].
On the other hand, when a high level of current ripple is drawn to the FC, it accelerates the aging of the electrodes
[5]. Usually, power converter topologies with input inductor are used in order to reduce the FC’s current ripple. The
input inductor provides a trade-off between input current ripple and the converter dynamic response.
Using a transformer-based converter to boost the voltage is an option but an extreme turns ratio enhances the
transformer non-idealities [6-7]. Traditional transformer-less converters can achieve a relatively high voltage gain
when they operate with a large duty cycle, but the transistor switching delay limits the switching frequency when the
duty ratio is extreme. The use of high switching frequency allows reducing the size of converters, because it results
in small inductors and capacitors with equivalent current and voltage ripples, this is the motivation to use a high
switching frequency [6-7]. A methodology to achieve high voltage gain with a non-extreme duty cycle and
transformer-less is highly desirable.
To solve these issues, a novel DC-DC converter topology which has a high gain voltage and low ripple at the input
current is proposed. The power converter is comprised by SEPIC converter cascaded with a voltage multiplier based
on diode-capacitor multipliers. The SEPIC (Single-Ended Primary-Inductor Converter) is one of the traditional
topologies and many industrial applications are based on the SEPIC, combinations or modifications of that topology
[8-18], such as LED driving [8-9], power factor correction [10-12], and applications where a symmetric voltage is
needed [13], see Fig. 1(a). Some important characteristics are: (i) it has a positive output voltage, (ii) when the
converter is off, there is no dc-current from the input to the output, as may occur in other topologies [1-3]. The output
voltage is provided in C2, its voltage can be expressed as:
VC 2
D

Vin 1  D
(1)
The duty cycle D can theoretically take values from 0 to 1, which means the maximum theoretically boost factor is
infinite, but parasitic elements limit the upper limit usually to 0.8, also for increasing the switching frequency it is
better the duty cycle to be around 0.5.
High voltage gain conversion has been also realized with converter with quadratic gain [19-20] with good results but
for PEMFC and other renewable energy applications non-quadratic converters are more common [1-3, 8-18]. For the
SEPIC, several improvements have been proposed, one way of increasing the voltage gain is the cascaded
connection of several converters, but this increase the complexity of the system [14]. The SEPIC can be extended
with the voltage-lift technique, especially the re-lift and multiple lift techniques [14] with good results in voltage
gain increase but an increase in the number of inductors, which are the heaviest components of the converter and
transistors which requires more gate drives circuits. Another way of increasing the voltage gain is combining the
SEPIC with diode-capacitors voltage multipliers [15-17]. [15] presents a methodology of combination of traditional
converters with diode-capacitor voltage multipliers and the multilevel SEPIC was briefly introduced, [16] presented
a different combination in which the voltage multiplier is connected to the transistor instead of the output, this
provides two different outputs but may lead to sub-utilization of the system if only one output is required, which is
usually the case in PEMFC systems, [17] develop a steady state space dynamic modeling of the multilevel SEPIC
introduced in [15].
This work explores the capability of the SEPIC topology to get a higher voltage gain and hybridized with diodecapacitor multipliers and their applications in PEMFC systems. The topology was briefly introduced in [15], a
dynamic model was developed in [17]; other extensions of the topology can be derived by extending the diodecapacitor voltage multiplier. The proposed structures achieve high voltage gain without extreme duty cycles and
transformer-less, which allow high switching frequency, they have low voltage stresses in switching devices,
modular structures, and more output levels can be added without modifying the main circuit, those characteristics are
highly desirables in PEMFC systems.
2. Analysis of the power converter proposed.
Fig. 1(a) shows the SEPIC, so-called 1x multilevel SEPIC, in the framework of this paper, the 2x multilevel SEPIC is
shown in Fig. 1(b). The designation of nx multilevel converter is according with the number of output capacitors n in
the converter.
The transistor stays open during a time ton and then stay closed a time toff. T is the total period, which is equal to
ton+toff, a duty cycle D may be defined as:
t
D  on
T
;
(1  D ) 
toff
(2)
T
The basic operation of the Multilevel SEPIC, see Fig. 1(a), can be summarized as:
1- The transistor closes, connecting L1 to the input voltage, the current in L1 increases with a constant slope and
positive sign (according with the sign definition in Fig. 2).
2- When the transistor opens, the current in L1 charges C1 with a positive voltage (according with the sign definition).
3- When the transistor closes connects L2 in parallel with C1 and C1 charges L2 with a positive current.
4- When the transistor opens again the current in L2 closes d1 charging C2 with a positive voltage.
This operation explained for the 1x Multilevel SEPIC in Fig. 1(a) applies also for the converter in Fig. 1(b) with next
considerations:
5- When the transistor opens and the current in L2 closes d1, see Fig. 2(a), the negative side of C3 and C4 are
connecter together, and then C3 can close d3 to charge C4 with a positive voltage.
6- When the transistor closes, C1 gets in series connection with C2, see Fig. 2(b) and the can charge C3 by closing d2.
The SEPIC drives a diode-capacitor voltage multiplier, in this case is a 2x multiplier, but it can be extended by
adding diodes and capacitors.
Averaging the voltage in L1 during one switching cycle and considering the standard small ripple approximation [18]
leads to:
L1
d iL1
dt
1
 t on v L1ton  t off v L1toff 
T
Where vL1ton is the voltage in L1 when the transistor is on and vL1toff is the voltage when the transistor is off, this
expression can be written in terms of the duty cycle defined in (2) as:
L1
d iL1
dt
(3)
DvL1ton  (1  D)v L1toff
The voltage in L1 in each switching state can be obtained from the equivalent circuits in Fig. 2.
v L1ton Vin
(4)
v L1toff Vin  VC1  VC 2
(5)
In steady state, the voltage in inductors is zero, leading to a constant current, from (3) and substituting (4) and (5)
this is expressed as:
DVin  (1  D )(Vin  VC1  VC 2 ) 0
(6)
In the other hand, the average voltage in L2 can be written as:
L2
d iL 2
dt
(7)
DvL 2ton  (1  D)v L 2toff
In the same way as L1, the voltage across L2 during the switching states can be found from the equivalent circuits in
Fig. 2.
v L 2ton  VC1
v L 2toff VC12
(8)
(9)
In steady state the average voltage across L2 is zero, this can be expressed from (7) by substituting (8) and (9):
D ( VC1 )  (1  D)VC 2 0
(10)
From (10), the voltage in C2 can be expressed as:
D
VC 2 VC1
1 D
(11)
Substituting (11) in (6) leads to:
VC1 Vin
(12)
From Fig. 2(b) it can be observed that C3 is charged by C1 and C2 in series and then:
D
1
VC 3 VC1  VC 2 Vin  Vin
Vin
1 D
1 D
From Fig. 2(a) it can be observed that the voltage in C4 is the same as in C3:
(13)
1
VC 4 VC 3 Vin
1 D
(14)
The output voltage is provided by VC2+VC4, and then it can be expressed as:
D
1 
1 D
Vout  VC 2  VC 4  Vin 

  Vin
1 D
 1  D 1  D

(15)
The voltage gain is high Fig. 3 shows the voltage gain again the duty cycle for different cases of n in (17), it is
evidently higher than in the boost converter.
From Fig. 2(a) it can be observed that the voltage blocked by the transistor is low, compared with the output voltage,
this is good because a high voltage converter can be implemented with low voltage transistors, which is the principle
of the multilevel converters. In other topologies such as the cascaded boost converter, the last transistor blocks the
full output voltage, and this limits the maximum output voltage to the voltage handled by the transistor, furthermore
high voltage transistors have higher on-resistance, compared with low voltage transistors.
As it can be observed from Fig. 1, the SEPIC is used to drive a diode-capacitor voltage multiplier also called the
Dickson charge pump, in this way a 3x Multilevel SEPIC and nx Multilevel SEPIC can be implemented, see Fig. 4.
All capacitors over c3 in the Dickson charge pump get the same voltage of c3, and then the output voltage of the 3x
Multilevel SEPIC is:
2D
Vout3 x VC 2  VC 4  VC 6 Vin
1 D
(16)
And for the nx multilevel SEPIC the voltage gain is given by:
n  1 D
Voutnx Vin
1 D
(17)
The number of inductors, transistors, diodes and capacitors for developing the proposed topology is shown in the
Table I.
Another advantage of the Multilevel SEPIC is that the voltage gain can be increased without increasing the number
of inductors, inductors are heavy, expensive and difficult to encapsulate, furthermore, only one transistor is needed
regardless on the number of levels, increasing the number of transistors would require more circuitry.
3. Power losses in devices.
This section explains how to calculate important parameters to calculate power losses in the dc-dc converter sub-
system, the purpose of this chapter is to provide with straight-forward calculations that can be used in practical
implementations, the procedure should be to calculate the losses in each device and ensure it can dissipate it.
Inductors have different source of losses, but inductors manufacturers usually provide a parameter called the
Equivalent Series Resistance ESR, the real inductor behaves such as an ideal lossless inductor in series with a
resistor, and losses can be easily approximated. The dc current in inductor L1 is equal to the input current, which can
be expressed as the output current Vout/R multiplier by the voltage gain, see (17), it can be finally expressed as (19),
V æ n  1 D æ
I L1  in æ
æ
R æ 1 D æ
2
(18)
Where R is the load resistance, modern inductors have a low ESR, but the quadratic term on the current means that
the input current increases rapidly when the voltage gain increases, this is reasonable since a for converter with a
gain of 10, the input current would be 10 times larger than the output current.
Multiplying the ESR by the square of (18) give us a good approximation of the inductor losses, since the current is a
dc plus a triangular small ripple, a more accurate approximation would be multiplying the ESR by the RMS current,
which is slightly larger than the dc current, it depends on the current ripple, if the current ripple is 10% of the dc
current, the RMS current would be 0.167% larger than the dc current, see page 56 of [18], for a more accurate
calculation see appendix A in [18]. It is important to notice than the ESR method is already an approximation, but the
result is good enough for being used in most of industrial applications. If ripple need to be considered it can be
calculated as:
V D
iL1  in
2 L1 f s
(19)
Where D is the duty cycle, and fs is the switching frequency. In the experimental prototype both inductors are 1140331K-RC from Bourns Inc. with an ESR of 75mΩ. For L2 the calculation is the same, the dc current in L2 is equal to
the output current.
The transistor has well known conduction and switching losses there are several approaches to calculate losses, all of
them require the voltage the transistor blocks when is open, the current the transistor drains when is closed, and the
duty cycle which in this case is the duty cycle of the SEPIC, the voltage the transistor blocks when is open is the
voltage in C1 plus the voltage in C2, regardless on the number of capacitors in the output multiplier, from (11) and
(12) this can be expressed as:
1
Vswopen  Vin
1 D
(20)
The current the transistor conducts when is closed (see Fig. 2(b)) is equal to the current throw L1 plus the current
throw L2, IL2 is equal to the output current and IL1 is equal to the input current as expressed in (18), and then the
current the transistor drains when is closed is equal to:
V  n   n  1  D
I sw  in 


R  1  D 
1  D
(21)
In the experimental prototype the transistor is the IPP110N20NA from Infineon Technologies.
Diodes drain the output current, the important parameter is the on-voltage, since their voltage is nearly insensitive to
the current, the dc current multiplied by their on-voltage is a good approximation of the power losses, in power
converters like this, diodes are the element that dissipate more power, their losses are larger than the transistors, since
their on-voltage may be around 1V, fortunately in this case diodes drain the output current, which is the smallest
current in the converter, any way it is important to care than the on-voltage times the output current is not larger than
diodes maximum dissipation power.
Finally, capacitors as the same as inductors have an Equivalent Series Resistance, ESR provided by the manufacturer,
in our case capacitors are all B32524R3106K from EPCOS in this case, in this kind of converters capacitors dissipate
few power when film capacitors are used, it is recommended not to use aluminum electrolytic capacitors, since their
equivalent series resistance and equivalent series inductance is much larger, in the other hand, capacitors in the
voltage multiplier have a non-rectangular waveform, multiplying the square output current times the ESR can give us
a good approximation, but for non-rectangular current waveforms, losses calculation deserves a special discussion
that is out of the scope of this paper, there are some references like [21], that are exclusively detonated to the
estimation of power losses in capacitors with non-rectangular current.
3.1 Comments and discussion of power losses
As it can be seen from equations, then the voltage gain is large, the input current is large, this may lead to high power
losses in devices near the input, this happen in all high gain converters, the input current is as big as the voltage gain
times the output current, special expertise and attention to power losses is necessarily when designing a high gain
converter, and the power losses calculation must be considered before experimentation.
4. Simulation and experimental results.
The 2x multilevel SEPIC was simulated and prototyped in order to demonstrate the operating principle. The
schematic is shown in Fig. 5 with all capacitors equal to 10μF and both inductors equal to 330μH, the input voltage
is 25V and the switching frequency is 50 kHz.
The proposed converter was simulated in Simulink™ and the Piece-wise Linear Electrical Circuit Simulation
(PLECS) software. A PEMFC stack model is used in the simulation as the DC input voltage. PEMFC model
simulates a stack of 24 VDC volts and 1.2 kW. Fig. 6 shows the system simulated.
Fig. 7 depicts the output voltage of the multilevel SEPIC with a resistive load of 100 Ω.
Simulation results displayed in Fig. 7 demonstrate that the output voltage of the multilevel SEPIC is increased almost
three times according with (17). Besides, the current drawn to the PEMFC is non-pulsed which contributes to
increase the time life of the stack.
The experimental prototype is showed in Fig. 8. Film capacitors were used and a Texas Instruments microcontroller
MSP430G2553 provides the switching function. A resistor bank is used as a variable load for the multilevel SEPIC.
Fig. 9 shows important waveforms, for an operating condition of low load, where the input current, output and
switch voltages are shown for a load of 225Ω.
On the other hand, Fig. 10 shows the waveforms for an operating condition of heavy load with a load of 35Ω. As can
be seen the voltage ripple in capacitors is higher; the current ripple in the inductor is not different but seems lower
because the different scale (2A/div).
Fig. 11 shows a graphic of the efficiency versus output power, the efficiency is over 90% in most of the operating
points.
Fig. 12 shows a severe load-change test with a time scale of 1ms/div, it can see that the current step is very high, but
the output voltage change is relatively small. The voltage change under this condition may be minimized by
increasing the capacitance if necessary.
5. Conclusions
This work explores the capability of the traditional dc-dc SEPIC topology to achieve high voltage gain by combining
the converter with a diode-capacitor voltage multiplier and its applications to a PEMFC energy system. The toology
demonstrate good results for the stablished requirements. The proposed structures have high voltage gain without the
use of extreme duty cycles and without the use of transformers, this allows high switching frequency, they have low
voltage stress in switching devices, modular structures, and more output levels can be added without modifying the
main circuit, furthermore, when the converter is off, there is no dc path for current to flow from the Fuel Cell to the
load.
The voltage gain can be increased without increasing the number of inductors which are difficult to encapsulate and
without increasing the number of switches which require more circuitry, by using few inductors converters get reach
high efficiency, high power density and simple structures, experimental results are provided.
6. Acknowledgments
This work was supported by Universidad Panamericana Campus Guadalajara, Mexico, under project UP-CI-2015FING-01. Besides, Victor M. Sanchez and Romeli Barbosa wish to thank to CONACyT under the project 252003
“Programa de Redes Tematicas (RTH2)”.
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Feb. 2015.
- A novel dc-dc multilevel SEPIC converter is proposed.
- The converter proposed is designed to power conditioning of a PEMFC
- The converter proposed operates in continuous conduction mode which allows a nonpulsed current drawn from Fuel Cell.
- The output voltage in the multilevel SEPIC converter can be increased by a diodecapacitor voltage multiplier
- The voltage gain in the Multilevel SEPIC converter can be increased without increasing
the number of inductors and employing one transistor.
TABLE I
Number of components for different Multilevel SEPIC converters
Inductors
Transistors
Capacitors
Diodes
1x
2
1
2
1
2x
2
1
4
3
3x
2
1
6
5
nx
2
1
2n
2n-1
Figure Captions
Fig. 1. Multilevel SEPIC converter (a) 1x (b) 2x.
Fig. 2. Equivalent circuits when (a) the transistor is off (b) the transistor is on.
Fig. 3. Voltage gain vs. duty cycle.
Fig. 4. 3x Multilevel SEPIC converter and extension of nx.
Fig. 5. Multilevel SEPIC converter implemented.
Fig. 6. PEMFC system simulated.
Fig. 7. Simulation results.
Fig. 8. Experimental protoype.
Fig. 9. Experimental waveforms in the proposed converter with low load.
Fig. 10. Experimental waveforms in the proposed converter with heavy load.
Fig. 11. Efficiency vs output power.
Fig. 12. Dynamic response of the Multilevel Sepic Converter.
L1
Vin
c1
s
d1
L2
(a)
Fig. 1a
c2
R
d3
Vin
d2
c3
L1
c4
R
d1
s
c2
c1
L2
(b)1b
Fig.
Vout
d3
L1
c4
d2
c3
R
d1
c2
c1
Vin
L2
Fig. 2a
(a)
d3
L1
d2
c3
R
d1
c2
c1
Vin
c4
L2
(b)
Fig. 2b
20
18
V
Vin
16
14
n=5
12
n=4
10
8
6
n=3
4
n=2
2
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
Fig. 3
0.7
0.8
0.9
1
D
d5
c8
d4
c7
d5
c6
d4
c5
d3
c4
d2
c3
R
d1
L1
Vin
s
c2
c1
L2
Fig.4
L1=L2=330μH
c1=c2=c3=c4=10μF
iin
Vin
25V
L1
sFrec
50kHz
d3
c4
d2
c3
R V
out
d1
c2
c1
Vswitch
Fig. 5
L2
Fig. 6
100
Voutput
Vswitch
Iinput
4.5
80
4
70
3.5
60
3
50
2.5
40
2
30
1.5
20
1
10
0.5
0
0.04
0.04
0.04
0.04
0.04
time (s)
Fig. 7
0.0401
0.0401
0.0401
0.0401
0
0.0401
Iinput (A)
Voltage (V)
90
5
L2
Diodes
L1
Capacitors
Mosfet
Microcontroller
Fig. 8
2A/div
iin=iL1
Vout
6A
0A
80V
Vswitch
0V
20V/div
Fig. 10
0.5A/div
iin=iL1
1.5A
Vout
0A
80V
Vswitch
0V
20V/div
Fig. 9
2A/div
Vout
80V
8A
iin=iL1
0V
0A
20V/div
Time: 1ms/div
Fig. 12
93
92
91
90
89
88
87
0
50
100
Fig. 11
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150
200
250