Time delay thermal control of a compact proton exchange membrane fuel cell against disturbances and noisy measurements. (15th September 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Wang, Ya-Xiong; Chen, Quan; Ou, Kai; Zhao, Fuqiang; Sun, Fengchun
• Is Part Of: Energy conversion and management. Volume 244(2021)
• Publication Date: 2021-09-15
• Subjects: Compact proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) -- Liquid water saturation -- Thermal model with liquid water estimation -- Thermal management -- Time delay control (TDC) -- Temperature observer; Direct energy conversion -- Periodicals; Energy storage -- Periodicals; Energy transfer -- Periodicals; Énergie -- Conversion directe -- Périodiques; Direct energy conversion; Periodicals; 621.3105
• DOI: 10.1016/j.enconman.2021.114444
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0196-8904

Abstract

Highlights: Compact PEMFC thermal model with voltage and liquid water saturation is presented. Liquid water saturation in cathode catalyst layer is observed by Luenberger method. Time delay thermal control is proposed to tackle disturbance and noisy measurement. Time delay control with observer (TDCO) estimates temperature and its derivative. Compared with ADRC, TDCO obtains more accurate control and less energy consumption. Abstract: Accurate thermal control is challenging for a compact (like open-cathode type) proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) due to the increased coupling degree between air supply and cooling. Considering a large range of temperature variation occurring in the compact PEMFC under varied current disturbances, a time delay control (TDC) is developed to implement the thermal management in this article. The TDC is capable of eliminating unexpected disturbances by combining the time-delay information of input airflow and varied stack current, as well as the output temperature with the slow-dynamic characteristics of PEMFC thermal behavior. The liquid water saturation is introduced to interact the activation overpotential with heat and internal water changes. In particular, the observer of temperature and its derivative interfaced with TDC can co-enhance the noise variances rejection based on the thermal model with liquid water estimation. Simulation and experiment results demonstrate that the proposed TDC with observer (TDCO) is superior compared with the active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) in terms of temperature tracking accuracy and robustness to noise. In the equivalent driving cycle test, the RMSE of TDCO can be reduced by 20.16% and 44.32% compared with normal TDC using numerical differentiations and ADRC under the white Gaussian noise.