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

Shusheng Xiong, Zhankuan Wu, Wei Li, Daize Li, Teng Zhang, Yu Lan, Xiaoxuan Zhang, Shuyan Ye, Shuhao Peng, Zeyu Han, Jiarui Zhu, Qiujie Song, Zhixiao Jiao, Xiaofeng Wu and Heqing Huang
Additional contact information
Shusheng Xiong: College of Energy Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China
Zhankuan Wu: College of Energy Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China
Wei Li: College of Mechanical Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China
Daize Li: College of Energy Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China
Teng Zhang: College of Energy Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China
Yu Lan: College of Energy Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China
Xiaoxuan Zhang: College of Energy Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China
Shuyan Ye: College of Energy Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China
Shuhao Peng: College of Energy Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China
Zeyu Han: College of Energy Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China
Jiarui Zhu: College of Energy Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China
Qiujie Song: College of Energy Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China
Zhixiao Jiao: College of Energy Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China
Xiaofeng Wu: College of Energy Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China
Heqing Huang: College of Mechanical Engineering, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19717, USA

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 19, 1-14

Abstract: 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%.

Keywords: fuel cell; thermal management; polarization curve; fuzzy; humidification (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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