Control‐oriented fault detection of solid oxide fuel cell system unknown input on fuel supply

Abstract

AbstractAs the solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) system work environment is a high‐temperature environment for a long time, it is difficult to obtain the SOFC stack internal state change directly. When the fault occurs, it is difficult to determine where the fault occurs. Moreover, the existing literature ignores the impact of faults, which creates many problems for SOFC system control. Therefore, a state observer‐based fault detection method, which is used to detect the input flow sensor fault and the fuel input fault, is proposed. Their advantage is that they do not need data processing. To realize the fault detection, the observer is used to track the changes of SOFC stack chamber temperature. To obtain the observer estimation parameter, an approach from the actual stack structure parameters is employed to approximate the observer parameters. The results show the proposed fault detect method can judge fuel input fault type quickly and shield the disturbances signals from the sensor effectively. The proposed method also can be used to other operating points or air input fault.