Abstract
Polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells demonstrate potential as a comprehensive and general alternative to fossil fuel. They are also considered to be the energy source of the twenty-first century. However, fuel cell systems have non-linear output characteristics because of their input variations, which causes a significant loss in the overall system output. Thus, aiming to optimize their outputs, fuel cells are usually coupled with a controlled electronic actuator (DC-DC boost converter) that offers highly regulated output voltage. High-order sliding mode (HOSM) control has been effectively used for power electronic converters due to its high tracking accuracy, design simplicity, and robustness. Therefore, this paper proposes a novel maximum power point tracking (MPPT) method based on a combination of reference current estimator (RCE) and high-order prescribed convergence law (HO-PCL) for a PEM fuel cell power system. The proposed MPPT method is implemented practically on a hardware 360W FC-42/HLC evaluation kit. The obtained experimental results demonstrate the success of the proposed method in extracting the maximum power from the fuel cell with high tracking performance.
Highlights
Fossil fuel is considered to be one of the main causes of environmental problems related to global warming
This paper proposes a novel maximum power point tracking (MPPT) method based on a combination of reference current estimator (RCE) and high-order prescribed convergence law (HO-PCL) for a Polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell power system
It is notable that the performance of the FC-42 is enhanced by boosting the operating temperature from 42 ◦C to 45 ◦C, while they are dropped for temperatures above than 53 ◦C
Summary
Fossil fuel is considered to be one of the main causes of environmental problems related to global warming. During the last few years, several clean energy sources such as solar, wind, geothermal etc., have been developed to generate electric energy and replace conventional fuel [1,2,3,4,5,6,7] These alternative sources necessitate sophisticated and high-cost technologies, and they are not suitable for many applications. By virtue of its abundance in the earth, hydrogen has emerged as an available and advantageous fuel In this sense, PEM fuel cells which use hydrogen as the main fuel have shone the horizon as a comprehensive and general alternative to fossil fuel. They are considered to be the Actuators 2020, 9, 105; doi:10.3390/act9040105 www.mdpi.com/journal/actuators
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