A new fuel cell power conditioning system with extended life time and minimized DC-bus capacitor

This paper proposes a new fuel cell power conditioning system based on the current-fed dual-half-bridge (CF-DHB) dc-dc converter with extended life time and minimized dc bus capacitor. The traditional minimizing dc bus capacitor method is to adopt the dc active filter by using the dc chopper with active switches. The unique contribution of this paper is to minimize the dc bus capacitor without adding any components. Moreover, the CF-DHB converter realizes zero-voltage-switching (ZVS) operation for all switching devices without auxiliary circuits, resulting in the high-efficiency operation. A 1kW fuel cell power conditioning system experimental results were presented to validate the theoretical analysis and prove the advanced performance of the proposed fuel cell power conditioning system.