Improvement of Temperature and Humidity Control of Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells

Temperature and humidity are two important interconnected factors in the performance of PEMFCs (Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells). The fuel and oxidant humidity and stack temperature in a fuel cell were analyzed in this study. There are many factors that affect the temperature and humidity of the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inSustainability Vol. 13; no. 19; p. 10578
Main Authors Xiong, Shusheng, Wu, Zhankuan, Li, Wei, Li, Daize, Zhang, Teng, Lan, Yu, Zhang, Xiaoxuan, Ye, Shuyan, Peng, Shuhao, Han, Zeyu, Zhu, Jiarui, Song, Qiujie, Jiao, Zhixiao, Wu, Xiaofeng, Huang, Heqing
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.10.2021
Subjects
Alternative energy
Control methods
Controllers
Cooling systems
Efficiency
Electrical networks
Environmental impact
Fuel cells
Fuel technology
Heat
Humidity
Hydrogen
Moisture control
Oxidants
Oxidizing agents
Proton exchange membrane fuel cells
Simulation
Solenoid valves
Speed control
Sustainability
Temperature gradients
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Summary:Temperature and humidity are two important interconnected factors in the performance of PEMFCs (Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells). The fuel and oxidant humidity and stack temperature in a fuel cell were analyzed in this study. There are many factors that affect the temperature and humidity of the stack. We adopt the fuzzy control method of multi-input and multi-output to control the temperature and humidity of the stack. A model including a driver, vehicle, transmission motor, air feeding, electrical network, stack, hydrogen supply and cooling system was established to study the fuel cell performance. A fuzzy controller is proven to be better in improving the output power of fuel cells. The three control objectives are the fan speed control for regulating temperature, the solenoid valve on/off control of the bubble humidifier for humidity variation and the speed of the pump for regulating temperature difference. In addition, the results from the PID controller stack model and the fuzzy controller stack model are compared in this research. The fuel cell bench test has been built to validate the effectiveness of the proposed fuzzy control. The maximum temperature of the stack can be reduced by 5 °C with the fuzzy control in this paper, so the fuel cell output voltage (power) increases by an average of approximately 5.8%.
ISSN:2071-1050
2071-1050
DOI:10.3390/su131910578