A Comparison of Soft-Switched DC-to-DC Converters for Electrolyzer Application

An electrolyzer is part of a renewable energy system and generates hydrogen from water electrolysis that is used in fuel cells. A dc-to-dc converter is required to couple the electrolyzer to the system dc bus. This paper presents the design of three soft-switched high-frequency transformer isolated dc-to-dc converters for this application based on the given specifications. It is shown that LCL-type series resonant converter (SRC) with capacitive output filter is suitable for this application. Detailed theoretical and simulation results are presented. Due to the wide variation in input voltage and load current, no converter can maintain zero-voltage switching (ZVS) for the complete operating range. Therefore, a two-stage converter (ZVT boost converter followed by LCL SRC with capacitive output filter) is found suitable for this application. Experimental results are presented for the two-stage approach which shows ZVS for the entire line and load range.