A Study on the High Power Factor and Efficiency PFC Circuit using Wide Band-Gap Semiconductors for Ship Charger

In this paper, a high power factor and high efficiency PFC circuit for charging electric power to an energy management system in small-sized ship is proposed. In order to achieve high power factor and high efficiency, the continuous conduction mode suitable for a large capacity circuit among active power factor correction methods which can realize power factor correction and power conversion with one converter is adopted. In addition, GaN HEMT MOSFET (Gallium Nitride High Electron Mobility Transistor) and SiC-SBD (Schottky Barrier Diode), which are called as wide band-gap semiconductors, have been applied to a PFC boost converter in order to demonstrate excellent performance such as circuit's efficiency and power factor. To verify the validity of a proposed circuit, a 3kW class circuit was designed and tested for performance. Experiments have shown that the overall efficiency and power factor of the system have been improved when wide band-gap semiconductors have been applied to a proposed circuit than silicon type semiconductors. The results show that efficiency and power factor of a proposed circuit have been verified by achieving a maximum efficiency of 99.2% and a maximum power factor of 0.99.