Power conditioning of fuel cell systems in portable applications

Fuel cells are emerging as main power source for portable applications. These devices need power management circuit to connect varying output fuel cell voltage to desired regulated voltage load with high efficiency. Maintaining high efficiency of the converter over a wide loading range can improve stored fuel longevity. The purpose of this paper is to report a general review of most used topologies in fuel cell power conditioning applied to portable systems. Finally, a 100 W DC-DC converter for a particular fuel cell portable application will be presented. This converter was designed to fulfill several specifications of input and output voltage.