Thermal stress management of a solid oxide fuel cell using neural network predictive control

S.A. Hajimolana, S.M. Tonekabonimoghadam, M.A. Hussain, M.H. Chakrabarti, N.S. Jayakumar and M.A. Hashim

Energy, 2013, vol. 62, issue C, 320-329

Abstract: In SOFC (solid oxide fuel cell) systems operating at high temperatures, temperature fluctuation induces a thermal stress in the electrodes and electrolyte ceramics; therefore, the cell temperature distribution is recommended to be kept as constant as possible. In the present work, a mathematical model based on first principles is presented to avert such temperature fluctuations. The fuel cell running on ammonia is divided into five subsystems and factors such as mass/energy/momentum transfer, diffusion through porous media, electrochemical reactions, and polarization losses inside the subsystems are presented. Dynamic cell-tube temperature responses of the cell to step changes in conditions of the feed streams is investigated. The results of simulation indicate that the transient response of the SOFC is mainly influenced by the temperature dynamics. It is also shown that the inlet stream temperatures are associated with the highest long term start-up time (467 s) among other parameters in terms of step changes. In contrast the step change in fuel velocity has the lowest influence on the start-up time (about 190 s from initial steady state to the new steady state) among other parameters. A NNPC (neural network predictive controller) is then implemented for thermal stress management by controlling the cell tube temperature to avoid performance degradation by manipulating the temperature of the inlet air stream. The regulatory performance of the NNPC is compared with a PI (proportional–integral) controller. The performance of the control system confirms that NNPC is a non-linear-model-based strategy which can assure less oscillating control responses with shorter settling times in comparison to the PI controller.

Keywords: Solid oxide fuel cell; Neural network predictive control; Cell-tube temperature; Thermal stress (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544213007068
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:62:y:2013:i:c:p:320-329

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2013.08.031

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().