Interleaved High Gain DC/DC Boost Converter-Based Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell Fault-Tolerant Control

Abstract

Despite the development witnessed by fuel cell systems and considering them as a promising technology in the future. Faults management in Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell systems remains the major obstacle to meeting durability and reliability requirements for their use and commercialization, especially in automotive applications. DC/DC converters are used for power conditioning purposes in fuel cell systems, and can be also used in fault management. This study presents a promising solution for managing the most common faults in fuel cell systems (flooding and drying phenomena). The Fault-tolerant control is applied to an Interleaved High Gain DC/DC Boost Converter (IHGBC) associated with the fuel cell in event of faults. The strategy applied to the DC/DC converter controls the fuel cell current and voltage operating points, mitigating the fuel cell fault. The current drawn by the fuel cell changes according to the fault occurrence. a low current density operation offers the possibility of mitigating the flood fault, while the high current density process has advantage of increasing the water production in the cathode and thus avoiding the membrane drying. The simulation and experimental results demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed fault-tolerant control strategy in improving cell performance and restoring the optimal operation.