Abstract
Fuel cell technology is one of the most sought – after renewable technology. However, the output voltage of fuel cell (FC) stacks is inherently unstable, as such; it is of little or no use for most power supply applications. In addition to the unstable output voltage, FC stacks are susceptible to high current ripples, which can reduce the system’s life expectancy. It is therefore a requirement that the output voltage is stabilised and the high current ripple reduced in order to make FC technology useful. In order to achieve this, a power-conditioning unit (PCU) is interfaced directly to the FC stack module. The PCU is realised by means of a DC – DC converter or DC – AC inverter or a combination of both. This paper presents a PWM DC – DC Interleaved Boost Voltage Multiplier (IBVM) converter as the PCU for a Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) stack. The mathematical modelling of the converter is validated by simulation in MATLAB/SIMULINK. Important simulation results are presented herein: which show that the output voltage of a PEMFC stack can be stabilised.
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