Electronic – What are the issues with using multiple inductors for a DC/DC converter

Increasing the value of the inductor will sooner or later turn your circuit into Continuous Conduction Mode (CCM), where there is a constant DC current flowing through the inductor, and the ripple current (the triangle waveform) being superimposed on this base DC current.

This means that the current of the inductor in this mode never goes down to zero. The energy stored in the inductor is indeed \$\dfrac{LI^2}{2}\$, however, only a part of this energy gets transferred in a cycle to the consumer: \${\dfrac{LI_{max}^2}{2}} - {\dfrac{LI_{min}^2}{2}} = \dfrac{L(I_{max}^2-I_{min}^2)}{2}\$, the rest stays in the inductor (more or less permanently). The amount of energy used by the consumer will be the sum of the energy transferred through storage in the inductor, and the energy constantly being transferred by the DC current flowing through the inductor.

The amount of the maximum possible ripple current is determined by the inductance value, the switching frequency, the ON-OFF duty ratio (which more or less equals the output to input voltage ratio), and the voltages connected to the inductor (the input voltage minus the output voltage in the ON phase, and the output voltage in the OFF phase). Increasing the inductance value decreases the maximum possible ripple current. As soon as the output current needed is more than half of the maximum possible ripple current, operation will turn into CCM.

What disadvantages are there for having a larger inductance?

• More turns, therefore higher DC resistance in the inductor, meaning larger copper losses, or having to increase wire thickness/number of strands to compensate for this, thereby increasing inductor size & cost.

• Having a larger inductance, the feedback control loop will be slower, meaning that the power supply will be less flexible adapting to quickly changing loads. This will probably show itself as larger overshoots in response to a unit-step load change.

• When using an asynchronous buck converter, in OFF-state, the free-running diode will be conducting. In DCM, the diode is conducting only as long as the energy stored in the inductor gets fully removed. In CCM, the diode is conducting during the whole OFF-phase, as the inductor current never goes to zero. This means higher losses on the free-running diode - which may be a problem especially because the losses on the FET can be decreased by using a FET with a lower R_dson, but you cannot do the same with the diode. The smaller the output to input voltage ratio is, the more grave this problem could be.

While you may be able to get a 12V@15A buck-boost supply to work, the boost portion of that power supply is the portion of the design that will be very challenging.

Linear Tech does offer the LTC7812 which would supposedly allow you to do this (bear in mind the link is a press release!). You would need to cascade multiple units together to accomplish your goal, and that solution is designed to cascade outputs together. I have not personally used this part before so I can't vouch for the viability of that part.

Linear Tech does have a good reputation, and they probably have some development kits that you can obtain from them that would allow you to play around and see if it works. Once you are past that stage, it is likely to be fairly expensive to build this from the ground up; so unless you are building a lot of units you may wish to consider a solution that is composed of off-the-shelf components.

Have you considered using 24V automotive (truck) batteries and 24V-capable battery chargers? All of these components including the 24V->12V buck converters are readily available and can be sourced from retail outlets like Amazon.com.

I love the idea of rack-mounting this. Don't forget to add some cooling fans as dissipating ~30W of heat due to loss in there is something that you will need to think about. You'll want to ensure that you have some headroom in your battery capacity if you are gone for a long time, especially if the system is going to experience environmental temperature variations as that does sometimes affect battery capacity. This varies from battery-to-battery chemistry, so do your homework on that one before you build a bunch of units.

Good luck!