Design and application of PEM fuel cell-based cascade boost converter

This paper presents average sliding current controller (ASCC) for the proton membrane exchange fuel cell (PEMFC)-based DC-DC cascade boost converter under different source and load conditions. PEMFC which has variable voltage and current can be used in a lot of applications with a wide operating range in low temperatures. However, as the PEMFC produces low nonlinear voltage, this lower nonlinear voltage value needs to be increased as a linear voltage with an appropriate power electronics converter. Therefore, this paper proposes DC-DC cascade boost converter which has a higher voltage gain for PEMFC stack. First, a classical PI controller was applied to regulate the output voltage. Then, the current of the PEMFC-based DC-DC cascade boost converter was controlled via ASCC by using output of the voltage controller. After analyzing the dynamic model of the PEMFC-based DC-DC cascade boost converter via MATLAB/Simulink program, the experimental results of the controlled PEMFC-based DC-DC cascade boost converter are observed and discussed.