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Energy
EnergyProcedia
Procedia138 (2017) 000–000
00 (2017) 199–204
www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia

2017 International Conference on Alternative Energy in Developing Countries and Emerging Economies
2017 AEDCEE, 25 – 26 May 2017, Bangkok, Thailand

Two-Phase The
Interleaved Boost
15th International Converter
Symposium Using
on District Coupled
Heating Inductor for
and Cooling
Fuel Cell Applications
Assessing the feasibility of using the heat demand-outdoor
temperature function for, aPrabhuraj
1,2
long-term district heat
1,2
Nandakumar Selvaraju Shanmugham demand
, Sakda Somkun1forecast
*
1
School of Renewable Energy Technology, Naresuan University,Phitsunulok,65000,Thailand
I. Andrića,b,c*, A. PinaaInstitute
Hindustan2
, P. Ferrão a
, J. &Fournier
of Technology
b
., B. Lacarrièrec, O. Le Correc
Science,Chennai,603103,Chennai

a
IN+ Center for Innovation, Technology and Policy Research - Instituto Superior Técnico, Av. Rovisco Pais 1, 1049-001 Lisbon, Portugal
b
Veolia Recherche & Innovation, 291 Avenue Dreyfous Daniel, 78520 Limay, France
c
Abstract Département Systèmes Énergétiques et Environnement - IMT Atlantique, 4 rue Alfred Kastler, 44300 Nantes, France

This paper investigates the benefits of directly coupled and inversely coupled inductors compared to the conventional uncoupled
inductors. The coupled inductors using two phase interleaved boost DC-DC converter is used for high power and high
Abstract applications. The advantages of the coupled inductors interleaved boost converters include increased system
performance
efficiency, reduced core size, current ripple reduction. The focus is to develop useful design equations for the operation of the
District heating
interleaved networks are
boost converters undercommonly
continuous addressed
conductionin the literature
mode (CCM).asTheoneeffects
of theofmost effective
the direct and solutions for decreasing
inverse inductors the
has a key
greenhouse
benefit gas emissions
of converter from parameters
performance the buildingsuch
sector. These systems
as inductor require input
ripple current, high investments
ripple current,which areshould
which returned through
be less thanthe
4%heat
of
itssales. Duevalue
nominal to theof changed
the input climate conditions
current for the longerandlifebuilding
span of renovation
fuel cell andpolicies,
achieving heat demand
stable CCMinoperation.
the futureThecould decrease,
inductors are
prolonging the investment
® return period.
modeled in Matlab Simulink to simulate and evaluate the performance of the DC-DC boost interleaved converter with proper
The main
design scope of
procedure ofthis papercoupled,
directly is to assess the feasibility
uncoupled of using the
and inversely heat demand
coupled inductors– outdoor
for fuel temperature function
cell applications for heat
having demand
maximum
forecast.
output Theofdistrict
power 1kW, 28.8of Alvalade,
V and 35 A located in Lisbon
at the output (Portugal),
voltage of 120 V.was used as a case study. The district is consisted of 665
buildings that vary in both construction period and typology. Three weather scenarios (low, medium, high) and three district
©renovation
2017 The Authors. Published
scenariosPublished by Elsevier
were developed Ltd.
(shallow,
© 2017 The Authors. by Elsevier Ltd. intermediate, deep). To estimate the error, obtained heat demand values were
Peer-review
compared under
with responsibility
results from a of the scientific
dynamic heat committee
demand model,of the 2017 developed
previously International
andConference
validated byonthe
Alternative
authors. Energy in
Peer-review
­DThe
eveloping under responsibility
Countries and Emergingof the Organizing
Economies. Committee of 2017 AEDCEE.
results showed that when only weather change is considered, the margin of error could be acceptable for some applications
(the errorInterleaved
Keywords: in annualboost
demand was lower
converter; coupledthan 20%ripple
inductor; for all weather
current; scenarios
Continous considered).
conduction However,
mode; inversely after introducing
coupled; renovation
directly coupled;
scenarios, the error value increased up to 59.5% (depending on the weather and renovation scenarios combination considered).
The value of slope coefficient increased on average within the range of 3.8% up to 8% per decade, that corresponds to the
decrease in the number of heating hours of 22-139h during the heating season (depending on the combination of weather and
renovation scenarios considered). On the other hand, function intercept increased for 7.8-12.7% per decade (depending on the
*Corresponding author. Tel.:
coupled scenarios). The +66-55-963192;
values suggested fax: could
+66-55-963182.
be used to modify the function parameters for the scenarios considered, and
E-mail
improve address: sakdaso@nu.ac.th
the accuracy of heat demand estimations.

© 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of The 15th International Symposium on District Heating and
Cooling.

Keywords: Heat demand; Forecast; Climate change

1876-6102 © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of 2017 AEDCEE.

1876-6102 © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of The 15th International Symposium on District Heating and Cooling.
1876-6102 © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 2017 International Conference on Alternative Energy in
­Developing Countries and Emerging Economies.
10.1016/j.egypro.2017.10.150
200 Nandakumar Selvaraju et al. / Energy Procedia 138 (2017) 199–204
2 Author name / Energy Procedia 00 (2017) 000–000

1. Introduction

Renewable energy sources is an environmentally friendly and an interesting research field due to the mitigating
of the fossil fuels, which causes global warming. There are many sources of renewable energy such as Wind, Solar
Photovoltaics and fuel cell. Hydrogen can be used as an input source of energy to the fuel cell to generate electrical
energy. Fuel Cell is one of the promising solutions to the mentioned problems i.e. using an efficient method to
utilize their energy to high system efficiency, zero carbon emission, and low audible noise [1]. Polymer electrolyte
membrane (PEM) fuel cells are widely used in transportation, stationary power generation and portable devices due
to their simple construction and low temperature operation, which can be used at room temperature. The output of a
PEM fuel cell is an unregulated low voltage with the open circuit voltage of approximately 1 V/cell and decreases
with the increase of load current. The fuel cell output voltage is stepped up by connecting a DC-DC boost converter.
The output current of the fuel cell have current ripples ( ∆I FC ), which should be less than 4 % of the input current to
maintain the longer life time operation [2].
The boost converter transforms the low input power to high, which can be used for high power applications such
as electric vehicles, air craft and transit bus systems [3, 4]. There are two main drawbacks associated with the
conventional boost converter: 1. a high duty ratio is needed to obtain the required output voltage, which produces
extremely high losses in the semiconductors devices due to their parasitic effects and 2. Conventional boost
converters cannot achieve a high voltage gain due to the parasitic resistances and inductances that leads to produce
high voltage drops across it [5].
By using interleaved boost converter instead of conventional one, the system voltage can be stepped up and lower
current and voltage ripples can be achieved at the output of the converter. Moreover, using interleaved boost
converter compared to the conventional one reduces the size of the storage devices such as inductors and capacitors.
The interleaved boost converter having coupled inductors ensures reduced current ripples where the coupling
coefficient is K = L1 [6-9].
L2
In this paper, the focus is to develop useful equations of interleaved boost converter under the continuous
conduction mode operation (CCM). A complete simulation based comparison of directly coupled, uncoupled and
inversely coupled inductors connected to the interleaved DC-DC boost converter for fuel cell applications. The
coupled inductor effects the performance parameters such as inductor ripple current, input ripple current, minimum
load current and output ripple voltage [10]. The uncoupled inductor needs bigger core size as compared to the
coupled one but the flux is more in the former one where the flux is much reduced in the inverse coupled inductors
as compared to the direct coupled. The design of the uncoupled, direct coupled and inverse coupled inductors are
compared with the coupling coefficient -1< K <1 using the Matlab® Simulink.

Nomenclature

Vfc Fuel cell output voltage (V)

Vo Output voltage (V)
D Duty ratio
L1, L2 Self-Inductance (H)
Lm Mutual Inductance (H)
Lk Leakage Inductance (H)
fs Switching frequency (Hz)
S1, S2 Switches
Co Output capacitor (F)
Ro Output resistor (Ω)
 Nandakumar Selvaraju et al. / Energy Procedia 138 (2017) 199–204 201
Author name / Energy Procedia 00 (2017) 000–000 3

2. System configuration

Fig. 2 shows the circuit diagram of the uncoupled interleaved boost converter. The converter source voltage from
the fuel cell is VFC with L1 and L2 are self-inductances connected in parallel. The switching frequency fs of MOSFET
switches S1 with diode D1, S2 with D2 are connected in series. The output capacitor Co is connected in parallel to the
load Ro.
L1
I1 iL1 D1 iD1 Io
+ VL1 -

Uncoupled
inductor
iL2 D2
+ VL2 -
iD2
L2

Vfc Co Ro

S1 S2

Fig. 1. Circuit diagram of uncoupled inductor of interleaved boost converter

When switch S1 is ON, the diode D2 is in reverse biased and the inductor current iL1 is increased. When S2 is
OFF, the diode D1 is in forward biased and the inductor current iL 2 is reduced where stored energy in the inductor is
transferred to the output. The fuel cell output current I FC given to the converter as input has phase difference with
the in the switching frequency fs is called interleaving operation.
Duty ratio D and the input ripple current ∆I FC are given by:
Vfc
D = 1− (1)
Vo
V
∆I FC = o D(1 − D) (2)
Lfs
where f s the switching frequency, the inductor L and output capacitor C0 increases the rated output power in
parallel operation when K=0. The characteristic waveforms of the converter is shown in fig.3 operated in different
stages of duty cycles.
 Vo
 Lfs D(1 − D) for 0 ≤ D ≤ 0.5 (3)

∆I FC = 
 Vo (D − 0.5)(2 − 2 D )
 Lfs
for 0.5 ≤ D ≤ 1 (4)

 Po, max D(D − 0.5) for 0 ≤ D ≤ 0.5 (5)

VoCof D −1
 s
∆Vo = 
 Po, max (D − 0.5)
VoCof s for 0.5 ≤ D ≤ 1 (6)

3. Design of coupled inductor

The uncoupled interleaved boost converter have separate inductors connected in parallel when the two magnetic
cores are connected in one is called coupled inductor. The coupled inductor for used to reduce the ripple
current ∆I FC with the coupling coefficient of K.
202 Nandakumar Selvaraju et al. / Energy Procedia 138 (2017) 199–204
4 Author name / Energy Procedia 00 (2017) 000–000

i1 i1

Φ1 Φ1

i2 Φ2 Φ2

i2

(a) (b)
Fig. 2. Winding orientation of (a) Direct coupled and (b) Inverse coupled

The winding configuration of directly coupled inductors and inverse coupled is shown in Fig 2 along with the
associated vector directions for the induced magnetic flux [11]. The values of K has been derived in the equation,
shown in the Table I.

Table I. Two phase interleaved boost converter

Parameters D < 0.5 D > 0.5

Types of Inductor 0 ≤ D ≥ 0.5 0.5 ≤ D ≥ 1

Uncoupled V fc D V
I in = (1 − 2D) I in =
fc
2 × ( D − 0.5)
K=0 Lf s (1 − D) Lf s
Direct coupled D 1 1
V fc V fc
K=1 I in = (1 − 2 D ) × I in = 2 × ( D − 0 .5 ) ×
Lf s (1 − D ) 1+ k Lf s 1+ k
Inverse coupled D 1 1
V fc V fc
K = -1 I in = (1 − 2 D ) × I in = 2 × ( D − 0 .5 ) ×
Lf s (1 − D ) 1+ k Lf s 1+ k

3.1. Direct coupled inductor

Fig.3. shows the schematic diagram of the two-phase interleaved boost converter with directly coupled inductors.
The coupled inductors L1 and L2 sharing the same winding orientation.

I1 L1 iL1 D1
iD1 Io
+ VL 1 -
Iin
M
VL2 iL2 D2 iD2
+ -
I2 L2
Direct Coupled
inductor

S1 S2
Vfc
Co Ro

Fig. 3. Circuit diagram of interleaved boost converter with direct coupled inductor

L1

Iin + V1 - Lm Lk 1 I1
L2
Iin Lk 2
+ V2 - I2
Fig. 4. Equivalent circuit of directly coupled Inductors

Fig.4. shows the equivalent circuit of the directly coupled inductors. The general terms of coupled inductors are
mutual inductance as given in Eq. (7)
Lm = k L1 L2 (7)
 Nandakumar Selvaraju et al. / Energy Procedia 138 (2017) 199–204 203
Author name / Energy Procedia 00 (2017) 000–000 5

where L1 , L2 is the inductance of the two inductors, k is the coupling coefficient, Lk 1 , Lk 2 are the leakage
inductances of the inductors in the equivalent circuit and Lm is the mutual inductance. For the analysis we set L1 =
L2 = L and Lk 1 = Lk 2 = Lk. The self-inductance, mutual inductance and leakage inductance is calculated by
Lm = k × L
Lk = (1 − k ) × L (8)

3.2. Inverse coupled inductor:

I1 L1 iL1 D1 iD1 Io

Iin + VL1 -
M
VL2 iL2 D2 iD2
- +
I2 L2
Inverse coupled
inductor
S1 S2
Vfc
Co Ro

Fig. 5. Circuit diagram of interleaved boost converter with inversely coupled inductor

Fig. 5 shows the schematic diagram of interleaved boost converter with inversely coupled inductor. Under the
condition of duty cycle in (1) and the input ripples have form of input current shown in Table I. Then, the self-
inductance L, mutual inductance Lm and leakage inductance Lk is calculated to be

Lm= − k × L
Lk = (1 + k ) × L (9)

4. Results and discussion

Table 2. Simulation Parameters.

Parameters Uncoupled Directly coupled Inversely Coupled
Input Voltage (Vin) 28.8 V 28.8 V 28.8 V
Duty cycle (D) 76% 76% 76%
Switching frequency (fs) 25 kHz 25 kHz 25 kHz
Self-Inductors (L1, L2) 0.43 mH 0.24 mH 2.1 mH
Coupling Coefficient (k) 0 0.8 -0.8
Mutual Inductance (Lm) - 0.19 mH 1.7 mH
Output capacitor (Co) 0.722 µF 0.722 µF 0.722 µF
Output resistor (Ro) 14.40 Ω 14.40 Ω 14.40 Ω

Fig.6 Total input and inductor currents of the uncoupled inductor of interleaved boost converter
6204 Author nameSelvaraju
Nandakumar / Energy Procedia 00 (2017)
et al. / Energy 000–000
Procedia 138 (2017) 199–204

The simulation results of the uncoupled inductor of interleaved boost converter shows the input ripple current
and output voltage ripple is reduced. From Fig. 6 shows the input current ripple is 1.4A. The coupling coefficient of
K=0 is uncoupled inductor.

(a) (b)
Fig.7. (a) Total input ripple current of direct coupled of two phase interleaved boost converter
(b) Total input ripple current of inverse coupled of two phase interleaved boost converter

The simulation results of direct coupled of input current ripple is shown in Fig.7. (a).The direct coupled of
coupling coefficient is carefully chose the values of coupling coefficient is K= 1and reduced the ripple current is
1.1A. The inverse coupled interleaved boost converter of input current ripple of the simulation results is shown in
Fig.7. (b). It will reduce the ripple 1.0A and Coupling coefficient value of K = -1. The simulation results show
inverse coupled is very less ripple compared to uncoupled and direct coupled inductors.

5. conclusion

A complete design procedure and comparison of the uncoupled, directly coupled and inverse coupled inductors
of the interleaved boost converter is carried out. It analyses the design of interleaved boost converter with useful
equations. The coupled and uncoupled are verified under the continuous conduction mode operation. Compared to
the direct coupled, the inverse coupled reduces the output current ripples and low dc flux in the core. All the
advantage of interleaving, such as higher system efficiency and reduced ripples both the input current and the output
voltage. The simulation results of the interleaved boost converter with coupled and uncoupled were satisfied. In
simulation, the ripple current will reduce and size of the inductor is compact. Interleaved boost converter is better
than conventional converter. The prototype of inverse coupled inductor has been design and measured with the
value of coupling coefficient. The interleaved boost converter is used for high power applications and it is suitable
for eco-friendly environment.

References

[1] Phattanasak, M., et al. Study of two-phase interleaved boost converter using coupled inductors for a fuel cell. In 2013 10th
International Conference on Electrical Engineering/Electronics, Computer, Telecommunications and Information Technology. 2013.
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Materials, 2014. 666 (2014): p. 87-92.
[3] R.W.Erickson, D.M., Fundamentals of Power Electronics, ed. M. Kluwer. 2001, New York: Kluwer Academic Publishers. 1-871.
[4] Thounthong, P., et al., Fuel cell high-power applications. IEEE Industrial Electronics Magazine, 2009. 3(1): p. 32-46.
[5] Martinez, W., et al. Analysis of coupled-inductor configuration for an interleaved high step-up converter. in 2015 9th International
Conference on Power Electronics and ECCE Asia (ICPE-ECCE Asia). 2015.
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Journal of Current Research, 2012. 4(07): p. 075-080.
[9] Liji k.k, S.C., Ripple Current Reduction Technique for DC to DC Converter Using Tapped Inductor. International Journal of Latest
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[10] Farag. S. Alargt, A.S.A., Analysis and Simulation of Interleaved Boost Converter for Automotive applications. International Journal
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