A Novel ZCS-ZVS Hybrid Bidirectional DC-DC Converter for Fuel Cell and Supercapacitor Application

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel ZCS-ZVS hybrid bidirectional DC-DC converter based on fuel cells and supercapacitor devices. The described converter employs only one high frequency transformers to couple the half-bridge and full-bridge circuits together in the primary side and voltage doubler circuit in secondary side. Boost type converter can limit the output ripple current of the fuel cells; hybrid full-bridge structure can change operating modes according to the different input voltage. All the primary side switches can turn on under zero-current-switching condition (ZCS) in boost mode and transformer secondary side switches can turn on under zero-voltage-switching(ZVS). The operating principles of the converter are described in details. The proposed converter provides output voltages of the range 300-400V. With the proposed ZCS-ZVS concept, the MATLAB simulation results of the application of fuel cell and supercapacitor have been obtained and compared to those of hybrid bidirectional dc-dc converter (ZVS based) and the applications in order to show the superior performance of the proposed concept.