Experimental analysis of the performance of the air supply system in a 120 kW polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell system

Abstract

For analyzing the performance of 120 kW polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) system and its air supply system, an air system test bench was built, then applied on a 120 kW PEMFC system test bench composed of air supply subsystem, hydrogen supply subsystem, stack, cooling subsystem and electronic control subsystem. The strategy composed of feedforward table and Piecewise proportional integral (PI) feedback control strategy is employed to regulate the flow rate and pressure of air supply system. Firstly, the air compressor map and the mapping relationship between the speed of air compressor, opening of back-pressure valve and stack current are obtained by carrying out experiments on the PEMFC air system bench. Then, the max output performance, steady-state performance, the startup performance, the dynamic response abilities of PEMFC system are tested, respectively. During the experiments, performances under different test conditions were analyzed by comparing parameters such as voltage inconsistency, average voltage, minimum voltage, voltage range, net power of the PEMFC system, and stack power. The test results show that the air supply system can provide qualified flow rate and pressure for the PEMFC stack. The peak power of the stack is 120 kW and net power of the system is 97 kW when the current is 538 A. The response time from rated net power to idle net power is 12 s and from idle net power to rated net power is 23 s. The overshoot of average voltage and minimum voltage in the process of increasing load is both 0.01 V, which are 0.015 V and 0.02 V lower than that when the load is decreased, respectively. The dynamic response speed and stability of the PEMFC system in the process of decreasing the load are better than those in the process of increasing the load.