Design and Simulation of the Dynamic Behavior of a H-Infinity PEM Fuel Cell Pressure Control

Abstract

In this paper, a simplified model partial pressure of Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) is introduced. A Multi-Input–Multi-Output (MIMO) dynamic model with two inputs and two outputs is considered, where the inputs are control variable of anode and cathode, and the outputs are partial pressures of hydrogen and oxygen. Initially, the H∞ robust control strategies were applied to stabilize the system. The results show that the amplitude of alternative disturbances is decreased from 10 atm to 0.25 atm. Also, the pressure of each electrode tracks various input pressure profiles with negligible steady-state errors. On the other hand, the electrode pressure does not depend on the variations of constrained electrical current profiles by consumer in the PEM fuel cells. According to unsuitable percent overshoot (P.O.) and settling time of transient model response, system identification techniques are adopted to estimate the system’s transfer functions. After that a PID controller acting as a supervisory controller is properly developed to adjust the transient state behavior of the overall system. This makes the amplitude of alternative disturbances decrease from 10 atm to 0.003 atm. With this controller, the percent overshoot also decreases from 46% to 2% and the settling time (for 2% error) decreases from 0.26 to 0.03 seconds.

Key findings

• ▸The amplitude of alternative disturbances is decreased from 10 atm to 0.25 atm.
• ▸The pressure of each electrode tracks various input pressure profiles with negligible steady-state errors.
• ▸The electrode pressure does not depend on the variations of constrained electrical current profiles by consumer in the PEM fuel cells.

Keywords

Identifiers

DOI

10.1115/fuelcell2010-33011

Journal

ASME 2010 8th International Fuel Cell Science, Engineering and Technology Conference: Volume 1

Year

2009