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42842-AC9
Theoretical and Experimental Study of Multivariable Control of PEM Fuel Cells
Consicerable progress has been made in the areas of modeling optimization and control. This work has resulted in 4 journal publications, 1 journal publication to be submitted, 2 conference publications, 5 conference presentations and nine invited lectures in industries and academia by the PI.
Fuel cells are being developed, tested and benchmarked for both mobile and stationary applications. The push from the federal government towards hydrogen-based economy, and the fact that fuel cells operate at high efficiency and are environmentally friendly have been the major drivers propelling the fuel cell development programs. While considerable emphasis is being placed on resolving the underlying design and materials issues to make fuel cell power economically viable, the corresponding operational issues are also being investigated. Notable among them is the ability to demonstrate that the fuel cells can operate failure-free for 40,000 hours, which is the widely accepted current industry bench-mark. Routinely achieving such performance in fuel cells that are deployed would require effective control and diagnostics of fuel cells. This is particularly true in the case of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs), which have significant thermal and water management issues that need to be addressed effectively. Many of the mobile applications for which fuel cells (FC) are used involve the operation of the device under varying load conditions. The FC power response is however limited by airflow, heat, and water management. Hence there is a need to study and understand the dynamic control of fuel cells to deliver the required power at a specified voltage. While, there are control strategies that are being reported, a lot more work needs to be done to understand and develop efficient control strategies.
The major accomplishments from this work till now are:
(i) Development of a comprehensive steady-state model that includes the effect of liquid water in all the layers of the fuel cell (Resulted in one Journal paper)
(ii) Development of a dynamic model that can be used in control studies (Resulted in two journal papers)
(iii) Demonstration that significant platinum reduction is achievable through optimization studies on the steady-state model (Resulted in one journal paper)
(iv) Detailed control studies on an experimental PEM fuel cell in the PI's lab (A journal paper to be submitted)
