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Buck Boost Regulator for Supercaps

howroyd

I am looking for an output regulator to be powered by the supercapacitors that we are making in house.  Our caps can go up to 8V.

Ideally I would like to have the ability to use two in series, so a Vin(max) of 16-20V or higher.  Charging and balancing will be handled by a different circuit so not a concern here.

Vin(min) needs to be as low as possible to get as much energy out of the caps as possible. Ideally 1V or less, if this is achievable.

Output can be anything really, 2-5A perhaps and 5V, 12V or whatever.  It will be going intro a digital loadbank rather than an application that requires a set voltage.

I am guessing a switching buck/boost or SEPIC.

What chips can you recommend?  Preferably not a BGA/LGA if possible to keep soldering easy!

  • 0

    I've seen that many online schematics for using ultracapacitors as power sources place the ultracaps in series in order to increase the voltage that they can be charged to, lowering the capacitance of the circuit drastically while preserving the total energy. For example, 5 pieces of 2.7v 100F capacitors might be placed in series, bringing the voltage rating up to about 13.5v and the capacitance down to 20F. Now, ultracaps can't be used as direct replacements for batteries since their voltage drops quickly. So they'd need a buck, boost, or buck-boost converter to utilize the full capacity. For this example, let's try to get 12 volts at 750mA. Would it be more efficient / get more energy out using a buck-boost converter with a 13.5v, 20F setup, or using a boost converter with a 2.7v, 600F setup, or a 5.4v, 300F setup, etc?

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  • 0 in reply to klimbo13

    The most straightforward way to answer that might be for you to try using TI's WEBENCH tools. If you put in the requirements and dial up the efficiency, it'll look through their whole catalogue, work through all the individual circuits, and present you with the best results. Do that for the different cases and you'll then have a comparison you can use.