Control and operational management of a fuel-cell supply system for electric bicycle

The paper is concerned with the design of the control algorithm and the operational management program of a fuel-cell (FC) supply system for electric bicycle. The FC delivers the electric energy to the dc link of the propulsion system through a dc-dc boost converter, which is equipped with an input filter to reduce the FC current ripple and an output supercapacitor bank to shave the power peaks. The control of the dc-dc converter is built up around two nested feedback loops of current and voltage, and meets the requirements of ripple and dynamics for the current of the FC. The operational management of the FC supply system is based on a state machine and is aimed at running the system correctly in any working condition. In addition to the design of the control algorithm and the operational management program, the paper reports experimental results on the FC supply system and riding tests on the FC-powered bicycle.