The 2014 International Power Electronics Conference

Multi-phase DC-DC Converter with Ripple-less

Operation for Thermo-Electric Generator
Noriyuki Kimura*, Koji Niijima*, Toshimitsu Morizane* and Hideki Omori*
*Electrical and Electronic Systems Engineering Dept.,
Osaka Institute of Teclmology, Osaka, Japan
Email: n.kimura@ieee.org

Abstract-This paper presents the possibility to make the
dc current ripple to zero. The simulation results show that
the ripple-less operation is possible theoretically. The fast
response in the current control is also shown by using the
simple digital control algorithm. The control for the load
change is investigated in simulation. The simulation results
show that the output current loop is more suitable than the
output voltage loop. Experimental results show that the
ripple cannot be suppressed substantially because of the
delay in control system. Therefore, the suppression of the
effect of the delay in control is next step.
I. INTRODUCTION
Recently many dc output distributed energy source
have been developed. Some of these have low dc voltage
output and need to step up the voltage at the dc side.
Thenno-Electric Generator (TEG) is used to generate
electricity from the temperature difference (1,2).
known materials are kinds of semiconductor.
materials of p-type and n-type are connected as shown in
Fig. 1. It can regenerate the electricity from the wasted
heat, such as exhausted water of the boiler or exhausted
gas from the combustion engine. The output voltage is
low and usually a boost type chopper is connected. The
voltage-current (V-I) characteristics of TEG is as shown
in Fig. 1. And the equivalent circuit can be expressed
with series connected voltage source and the constant
The dc-dc converter provides the ability of maximum
power point tracking (MPPT) for some dc energy source.
The current ripple of the dc-dc converter may cause the
decrease in output power.
To reduce the current ripple, using larger inductance or
higher switching frequency are the simple solutions.
However the increase of the cost or the switching loss
limits these solutions. Another solution is using multi
phase converter circuit (3).
In this paper, we propose the ripple-less dc-dc
converter using the 2-phase dc-dc boost converter with
the constant duty ratio and output voltage ratio in the
critical current mode.
II. PROPOSED CIRCUIT AND STEADY STATE SIMULATION
The proposed 2-phase dc-dc boost converter circuit is
Well shown in Fig. 3. We have compared the ripple ratio with
The the conventional single chopper circuit in simulation.
The conventional single chopper circuit is shown in
Fig. 4. The inductance Ld is main parameter to suppress
the current ripple. Simulation results are shown in Fig. 5
when the inductance Ld is O.05mH. Triangular carrier
frequency is set to be 5kHz. The generator open voltage
is 10V and the terminal voltage at maximum power point
is 5V, that is half of open voltage.
L2

inner resistance as shown in Fig. 2.

I
I Hot water, gas, etc.
I

n n
p p

Fig.3. Proposed 2-phase boost converter

Cold water, gas, etc.

Vin Vsw
Fig. I Structure of thermo-electric generator

;-1-
v

Edc

-------

(a)V-1 characteristics (b) Equivalent circuit

T- ---

Fig. 4 Conventional single chopper circuit

Fig. 2 Characteristics of thermo-electric generator

978-1-4799-2705-0/14/$31.00 2014 IEEE 1806

 The 2014 International Power Electronics Conference

In Fig. 5, there is a large current ripple in the input

current lin. It affects the input voltage to the chopper and
the input power from the thermo-electric generator
largely. Then the energy extracted from the TEG is
reduced largely.
Fig. 6 shows the steady state simulation of the
proposed dc-dc converter using 2-phase boost chopper. It
is operated in the CRM and the input current has almost
V. 5
no ripple. The output voltage is fixed at Vo=2Vi . That V.5()V2 V.5()V4 V.5()V6
Time- (5)
means the duty factor is fixed to 0.5 in steady state. The
current can be changed by changing the switching Fig. 6 Simulation results of steady state

frequency. Merits are that the current ripple is

theoretically zero and the soft switching is realized at lin

switch-on. Demerits are that the output voltage is fixed to -'

2Vi and the switching frequency becomes high at the ,
small current.
Simulation results of the proposed circuit with TEG
are shown in Fig. 7. The inductances of the proposed
circuit, LJ and Lz, are 0.05mH. This parameter does not
affect the ripple ratio theoretically. It affects the Time (s)

switching frequency. The switching frequency changes

depending on the current amplitude. It is around 10kHz in (a) Input current
Vin Vout
this simulation. In this case, the output power is almost at
the maximum power point and kept constant.

I(L1)

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.

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i i i : : : : : :

:
0.0504 0.0508 0.0512 0.0516 0.052
Time (s)
'"
0.02 0.0204 0.0208 0.0212 0.0216 0,022
Time (s) (b) Input and output voltage
lin*Vin

(a) Input current

Vin

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:-
.. .. .. .. ..
.............. ........................... . .............

1111t111
8 .............. ............. .............. ............. .............. .............
.

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.

f
. . .
6 - 10
. . . . .

'" 0.05 0.0504 0.0508

Time (s)
0.0512 0.0516 0.052

0.02 0.0204 0.0208 0.0212 0.0216 0,022

Time (s)

(c) Input power

(b) Input voltage
(output power from thermo-electric generator)
I(L1)'Vin

Fig. 7 Simulation results of double chopper

30

1\ 1\ il\ 1\ il\ 1\ il\ /\ il\ 1\ '1\ 1\ '1\ 1\ '1\ 1\ 1\1\ 1\1\

25

20 (Vs=lOY, Rin= 1 ohm, Ld=O.OSmH, Rd=O.l ohm)

15
\1 \1 \1 II II \1 \1 \1 \ \/\ \/\
10 1 1 1 V V

0.02 0.0204 0.0208 0.0212 0.0216 0 022

III. CONTROLLER
Time (s)

To correspond to the load change or the parameter

(c) Input power change of the energy source, the feedback control is
added. Schematic diagrams of the controllers and the
(output power from thermo-electric generator)
simulation results are shown in Fig. 8.
Fig. S Simulation results of single chopper
One method uses the output voltage as the input signal
(Vs=lOV, Rin= 1 ohm, Ld=O.OSmH, Rd=O.l ohm) as shown in Fig. 8(a). Another method uses the output
current as the input signal as shown in Fig. 8(b).

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1. The switch 1 is switched off and the switch 2 is

switched on, when the current ILl reaches the current
Vi
reference.
2. The switch 1 is switched on and the switch 2 is
switched off, when the current ILl reaches zero.

IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS OF STEADY STATE

(a) Controller 1 Experimental results of steady state are shown in Fig.

10. There is certain amount of ripple in total input
,--------, IDJ
Vi --+I f-----. current. It is also shown that the decreasing rate of the

Vo ....---.1 1 Vo inductor current is larger. It means that the output voltage

is larger than twice of the input voltage. Another
SC difference from the simulation results is longer zero
. ... ... . .
............... .
current period.
. .
.

: 11pref :
: : 10 We investigated the possibility of the effect of the
: .--.- delay in control. Simulation results with the delay in the
control are shown in Fig. 11. The large ripple is seen in
Controller
..........................
. the total current as same as the results.
(b)
.

Controller 2
Fig. 8 Schematic diagram of controller

SWl:0FF
I[A] SW2:0N

Ii -4---------------,,-----
,
, .
, .
, .
,

,
,

" ,'

, .
JS11:0N 1\
SW2:0FF Fig.IO Experimental results of steady state
,

IL2 '
o t[s] I(RL 1) I(RL2) lin

Fig. 9 Basic control of proposed boost converter

0.4

The on switching signal of two chopper circuit is

shifted 180 degree. The control method of this circuit has
0.2
the following characteristics.
1. In steady state, the duty factor is controlled to be
0.5. In other words, the output voltage is controlled
to be the twice of the input voltage.
2. The switching frequency is changed to control the
0.05 0.0502 0.0504 0.0506 0.0508
current, which is inversely proportional to the Time (5)
switching frequency. The smallest output current
may be limited by the highest switching frequency. (a) Current (each inductor and total)
3.Zero current soft switching (ZCS) can be achieved Vin Vout
12
at the switch-on timing.
4. The inductance of the inductor can be much smaller 10
than that of the single converter at the same ripple
ratio limit.
We have designed the controller to have larger merits
in the proposed circuit. Here, we have compared two
controllers. One measures the output current and controls
the input current half of it. Another measures the output
voltage and controls it twice of the input voltage. Both
controllers output the current reference Iref.
0.05 0.0502 0.0504 0.0506 0.0508
We make one of the inductor currents as the master, Time (s)

e.g. the chopper 1 current ILl, and another slave, e.g. the
chopper 2 current IL2 The sequence of the control is as (b) Voltage (input and output)
follows. Fig. II Simulation results of controller 2 with delay

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The delay cause the excess of the peak current value theoretically. The fast response in the current control is
and it results in the larger output voltage than twice of the also shown by using the simple digital control algorithm.
input voltage as shown in Fig. 11 (b). Experimental results show that the ripple cannot be
suppressed substantially because of the delay in control
system. Therefore, the suppression of the effect of the

V. SIMULATION RESULTS OF CURRENT CONTROL delay in control is next step.

The control for the load change is investigated in
Fig. 12 shows the simulation results of the proposed
simulation. The simulation results show that the output
circuit when the current reference is changed in step
current loop is faster than the output voltage loop.
manner. Each inductor current of the parallel boost
circuits are ILl, IL2 . Each current is controlled to limit the
peak value at the current reference. Input current is the
REFERENCES
total of each current and is the ripple-less dc current at the
[I] Singh, B.; Tan, L.; Date, A.; Akbarzadeh, A. Power
steady state. The value of the dc current is equal to the
Generation from Salinity Gradient Solar Pond Using
current reference Iref.
Thermoelectric Generators for Renewable Energy
When the current reference is changed, the response is Application. In Proceeding of the 201 2 IEEE International
within one switching period and very fast. In case of Conference on Power and Energy (PECon), Kota
current increase, it is seen that the change from t) to t2 is Kinabalu,Malaysia,2-5 December 20 1 2; pp. 89-92,20 1 2.
smaller than the half cycle. On the other hand, in case of [2] Hiroaki Yamada, Koji Kimura, Tsuyoshi Hanamoto,
the current decrease, more than one cycle is thought to be Toshihiko Ishiyama, Tadashi Sakaguchi and Tsuyoshi
necessary to change from t3 to t4 , since the current has to Takahashi, "A Novel MPPT Control Method of
be decreased much more than the reference value. Thermoelectric Power Generation with Single Sensor",
App!. Sci. 20 1 3, vo1.3(No.2), pp. 545-558;
doi:I0.3390/app3020545,201 3.
3'
. - -Iref -- -I-,- - - +[:2" - ---------:- ------------------i-- ----------------- [3] Akihiro Toru, Hitoshi Haga, Seiji Kondo:" Comparison
,,--.-----,,---
--c ...;.
' ---.--
- --.--------. -------------------- between Phase Number and Operation Mode of Multiphase
2.5
Boost Chopper for Reducing Input Current Ripple" ,IEE
Japan Trans. lA,Vo!.1 32, No.2, p.250-257 (20 1 2)
1.5

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Time (s)
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(a) Simulation results of total current
Fig. 12 Simulation results of proposed boost converter

To correspond to the load change or the parameter

change of the energy source, the feedback control is
added. Simulation results are shown in Fig. 13 and 14.
In simulation, the load changes from 5 ohm to 10 ohm
at the time 0.5 sec. Simulation results in Fig.13(a) and
Fig. 14(a) show that the inductor total current decreases.
It is clearly shown that the controller 2, which uses the
output current as the input signal, is faster than the
controller 1, which uses the output voltage as the input V.5 V.5.cJV2 V.5.cJV4 V.5.cJV6
T i me (s )
signal. The reason is that the change of the current is
faster than the voltage change. (b) Simulation results of currents just after load change
Fig. 13 Simulation results of controller 1
VI. CONCLUSION

We have investigated the ripple-less dc-dc converter

with two-phase boost chopper. The simulation results
show that the ripple-less operation IS possible

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 The 2014 International Power Electronics Conference

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(b) Simulation results of currents just after load change

Fig. 14 Simulation results of controller 2

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