A Novel High Power Hybrid Rectifier With Low Cost and High Grid Current Quality for Improved Efficiency of Electrolytic Hydrogen Production

Abstract

This letter proposes a novel three-phase hybrid rectifier topology and control method for high power electrolytic hydrogen production application. It is composed of a primary rectifier, i.e., a six-pulse silicon controlled rectifier (SCR) and an auxiliary converter, including a pulsewidth modulation (PWM) voltage source converter and a phase-shift-full-bridge converter. SCR undertakes most of the power consumed by electrolysis cell, and the auxiliary converter can compensate dc current ripples and absorb ac current harmonics of primary rectifier simultaneously. Compared with high power PWM rectifier, the proposed hybrid rectifier can keep the main benefits of PWM rectifier, such as the low dc current ripple to realize improved efficiency of electrolytic hydrogen production and high grid current quality at ac side while significantly reducing the cost. The effectiveness of the proposed hybrid rectifier is verified by the simulation as well as experimental results.