Power Generation Using Fuel Cell in the Application of Sensor Power Supply

Abstract

Due to the growing demand for energy sets concern for the researchers to emphasize power generation through non-conventional sources because of their advantages over conventional source. This leads towards the intense research work carried out on fuel cells. Fuel cells have the ability of supplying electricity in the situation where the scope of conventional or other non-conventional power generating option is difficult to implement. The other advantages are transportability, flexibility, suitability and environment friendly operation. The particular advantage of transportability is well utilized in distributed power applications such as on board power supplies. This paper focuses on a low power converter energized by a fuel cell. It gives an overview of modelling of fuel cell and flyback converter with its different topologies that can be used in sensor application. Here different topologies of flyback converter are taken into consideration and out of these different topologies, the highest efficiency topology is chosen to supply power to the sensors and thereby its performance is tested. This converter is compared with the conventional method of supplying power to the sensor board and their performance is observed in terms of efficiency and other parameters. The simulation results are discussed and the performance is validated through experimental results.