Modelling and controlling of polymer electrolyte fuel cell systems

This thesis focuses on the modelling and controlling of polymer electrolyte fuelcell (PEFC) systems. A system level dynamic PEFC model has been developedto test the system performance (output voltage, reactants gas partial pressures,and stack temperature) for different operating conditions. The simulation resultsare in good agreement with the experimental data, which indicates that thePEFC model is well qualified to capture the dynamic performance of the PEFCsystem. Controlling strategies play a significant role in improving the fuel cellsystem’s reliability. Novel model predictive control (MPC) controllers and proportional–integral–derivative (PID) controllers are proposed and implemented indifferent PEFC systems to control voltage and regulate temperature to enhancesystem performance. MPC controllers show superior performance to PID controllers in tracking the reference value, with less overshoot and faster response. Anovel hydrogen selective membrane reactor (MR) is designed for methanol steamreforming (MSR) to produce fuel cell grade hydrogen for PEFC stack use. Thebackpropagation (BP) neural network algorithm is applied to find the mappingrelation between the MR’s operating parameters and the PEFC system’s outputperformance. Simulation results show that the BP neural network algorithm canwell predict the system behaviour and that the developed mapping relation modelcan be used for practical operation guidance and future control applications

Control of Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell System

265 p.In the era of sustainable development, proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell technology has shown significant potential as a renewable energy source. This thesis focuses on improving the performance of the PEM fuel cell system through the use of appropriate algorithms for controlling the power interface. The main objective is to find an effective and optimal algorithm or control law for keeping the stack operating at an adequate power point. Add to this, it is intended to apply the artificial intelligence approach for studying the effect of temperature and humidity on the stack performance. The main points addressed in this study are : modeling of a PEM fuel cell system, studying the effect of temperature and humidity on the PEM fuel cell stack, studying the most common used power converters in renewable energy systems, studying the most common algorithms applied on fuel cell systems, design and implementation of a new MPPT control method for the PEM fuel cell system

A Novel Adaptive PID Controller Design for a PEM Fuel Cell Using Stochastic Gradient Descent with Momentum Enhanced by Whale Optimizer

This paper presents an adaptive PID using stochastic gradient descent with momentum (SGDM) for a proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) power system. PEMFC is a nonlinear system that encounters external disturbances such as inlet gas pressures and temperature variations, for which an adaptive control law should be designed. The SGDM algorithm is employed to minimize the cost function and adapt the PID parameters according to the perturbation changes. The whale optimization algorithm (WOA) was chosen to enhance the adaptive rates in the offline mode. The proposed controller is compared with PID stochastic gradient descent (PIDSGD) and PID Ziegler Nichols tuning (PID-ZN). The control strategies’ robustnesses are tested under a variety of temperatures and loads. Unlike the PIDSGD and PID-ZN controllers, the PIDSGDM controller can attain the required control performance, such as fast convergence and high robustness. Simulation results using Matlab/Simulink have been studied and illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller.The authors wish to express their gratitude to the Basque Government through the project EKOHEGAZ (ELKARTEK KK-2021/00092), to the Diputación Foral de Álava (DFA) through the project CONAVANTER, and to the UPV/EHU through the project GIU20/063 for supporting this work

A global integral terminal sliding mode control based on a novel reaching law for a proton exchange membrane fuel cell system

Proton exchange membrane fuel cells are devices with huge potential for renewable and clean industries due to their high efficiency and low emissions. Since the proton exchange membrane fuel cell employed in this research supplied a low output voltage, it was encouraged to use a boost converter with a designed non-linear controller to provide a suitable end-user voltage. In this paper, we proposed a novel control framework based on sliding mode control, which is a global integral sliding mode control linked with a quick reaching law that has been implemented in a commercial fuel cell system Heliocentris FC50 through a dSpace 1102 control board. We compared the strategy with a conventional sliding mode controller and an integral terminal sliding mode controller where we addressed a Lyapunov stability proof has for each structure. We contrasted the experimental outcomes where we proved the superiority of the proposed novel design in terms of robustness, convergence speed. Additionally, as the sliding mode controllers are well known by the energy consumption caused by the chattering effect, we analysed every framework in these terms. Finally, it was found that the proposed structure offered an enhancement in the energy consumption issues. Moreover, the applicability of the proposed control scheme has been demonstrated through the real time implementation over a commercial fuel cell.The authors wish to express their gratitude to the Basque Govern-ment, through the project EKOHEGAZ (ELKARTEK KK-2021/00092) , to the Diputacion Foral de alava (DFA) , through the project CONA-VANTER, and to the UPV/EHU, through the project GIU20/063, for supporting this work. The authors wish to express their gratitude to the Basque Govern-ment, through the project EKOHEGAZ (ELKARTEK KK-2021/00092) , to the Diputacion Foral de alava (DFA) , through the project CONA-VANTER, and to the UPV/EHU, through the project GIU20/063, for supporting this work

Fuel Cell Renewable Hybrid Power Systems

Climate change is becoming visible today, and so this book—through including innovative solutions and experimental research as well as state-of-the-art studies in challenging areas related to sustainable energy development based on hybrid energy systems that combine renewable energy systems with fuel cells—represents a useful resource for researchers in these fields. In this context, hydrogen fuel cell technology is one of the alternative solutions for the development of future clean energy systems. As this book presents the latest solutions, readers working in research areas related to the above are invited to read it

Energy Harvesting and Energy Storage Systems

This book discuss the recent developments in energy harvesting and energy storage systems. Sustainable development systems are based on three pillars: economic development, environmental stewardship, and social equity. One of the guiding principles for finding the balance between these pillars is to limit the use of non-renewable energy sources

Prognostics and Health Management of PEMFC - state of the art and remaining challenges.

International audienceFuel Cell systems (FC) represent a promising alternative energy source. However, even if this technology is close to being dustrial deployment: FC still must be optimized, particularly by increasing their limited lifespan. This involves a better understanding of wearing processes and requires emulating the behavior of the whole system. Furthermore, a new area of science and technology emerges: Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) appears to be of great interest to face the problems of health assessment and life prediction of FCs. According to this, the aim of this paper is to present the current state of the art on PHM of FCs, more precisely of Proton-Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFC) stack. PHM discipline is described in order to depict the processing layers that allow early deviations detection, avoiding faults, deciding mitigation actions, and thereby increasing the useful life of FCs. On this basis, a taxonomy of existing works on PHM of PEMFC is given, highlighting open problems to be addressed. The whole enables getting a better understanding of remaining challenging issues in this area

Prospects of Integrated Photovoltaic-Fuel Cell Systems in a Hydrogen Economy: A Comprehensive Review

From MDPI via Jisc Publications RouterHistory: accepted 2021-10-08, pub-electronic 2021-10-19Publication status: PublishedFunder: Petroleum Technology Development Fund Nigeria; Grant(s): PTDF/ED/PHD/OC/1078/17Integrated photovoltaic-fuel cell (IPVFC) systems, amongst other integrated energy generation methodologies are renewable and clean energy technologies that have received diverse research and development attentions over the last few decades due to their potential applications in a hydrogen economy. This article systematically updates the state-of-the-art of IPVFC systems and provides critical insights into the research and development gaps needed to be filled/addressed to advance these systems towards full commercialization. Design methodologies, renewable energy-based microgrid and off-grid applications, energy management strategies, optimizations and the prospects as self-sustaining power sources were covered. IPVFC systems could play an important role in the upcoming hydrogen economy since they depend on solar hydrogen which has almost zero emissions during operation. Highlighted herein are the advances as well as the technical challenges to be surmounted to realize numerous potential applications of IPVFC systems in unmanned aerial vehicles, hybrid electric vehicles, agricultural applications, telecommunications, desalination, synthesis of ammonia, boats, buildings, and distributed microgrid applications

Hybrid power management for fuel cell-supercapacitor powered hybrid electric vehicle

Fuel cell (FC) with a combination of supercapacitor (SC) based hybrid electric vehicles have been regarded as a potential solution in the future transportation system. This is due to their zero-emission, enhancement of transient power demand, ability to absorb the energy from the regenerative braking, high efficiency, and long mileage. Nevertheless, the nonlinear output characteristics of the FC system are a feeble point owing to internal constraints such as membrane water content and cell temperature. Hence it is essential to extricate as much power as possible from the stack to avert excessive fuel usage and low system efficiency. Conversely, despite the advantages of the SC as an auxiliary energy storage system, the series connection of SC cells causes a cell imbalance problem due to uneven cell characteristics that occur during the manufacturing process and its ambient conditions. This discrepancy of cell voltages in a supercapacitor module leads to reduce the stack’s efficiency and its lifetime. Furthermore, the above limitations of the power sources and initial state of SC’s charge affect the power management’s distribution of power among the multiple sources. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to propose a hybrid power management for fuel cell-supercapacitor powered hybrid electric vehicles to solve the three identified problems. Firstly, this thesis focuses on a maximum power point tracking (MPPT) controller with a modified 4-leg interleaved boost converter (M-FLIBC) topology for the FC system. The effectiveness of the proposed IBC with a controller for the FC is compared with the two additional controllers couples with the conventional FLIBC topology. Next, a global modular balancer for voltage balancing of multiple supercapacitor cells is connected in series for an HEV system. The global modular balancing architecture is proposed based on forward conversion, which integrates cell balancing, module balancing, and operating for different frequencies. Thus, greatly reducing the volume and implementation complexity. Finally, the thesis evaluates hybrid power management (HPM) for effective power sources distribution, in order to reduce hydrogen consumption and enhance the vehicle's fuel economy. In this case, an equivalent circuit model of SC is developed for the energy storage system. The combination of an extended Kalman filter (EKF) and traditional coulomb counting (CC) method is used to estimate the SC state of charge in improving the effectiveness of the HPM. To evaluate the fuel economy under realistic driving conditions, the combined environmental protection agency (EPA) test cycles for a city and highway are considered. The outcome of performance comparison of the different controllers based on MPPT technique in terms of voltage, current, power, settling time, and efficiency of the FC indicates that the radial basis function network (RBFN) based MPPT controller with the M-FLIBC outperforms the PID and Fuzzy based controllers. With respect to controlling of SC in HEV environment, the proposed topology of SC presents effective voltage balancing with a lower component count, able to operate at different frequencies, i.e., 10 to 70 kHz, as well opens to unlimited stackable modular numbers of SC cells for the HEV performance analysis. Ultimately, with all the proposed control topologies and combined EKF-CC based power management for the FC-SC in Series HEV, the vehicle's fuel economy is increased to 93.38 km/kg as compared to traditional CC based power management of 86.53 km/kg, besides it improves the vehicle’s acceleration within 0-100 km/h in 9.0 seconds respectively. Finally, the research shows that the hybrid power management of FC and SC powered HEV leads to improved performance of the vehicle in terms of the key measures. Suggestions for future research are also highlighted

Advanced Modeling and Research in Hybrid Microgrid Control and Optimization

This book presents the latest solutions in fuel cell (FC) and renewable energy implementation in mobile and stationary applications. The implementation of advanced energy management and optimization strategies are detailed for fuel cell and renewable microgrids, and for the multi-FC stack architecture of FC/electric vehicles to enhance the reliability of these systems and to reduce the costs related to energy production and maintenance. Cyber-security methods based on blockchain technology to increase the resilience of FC renewable hybrid microgrids are also presented. Therefore, this book is for all readers interested in these challenging directions of research