Temperature and humidity management of PEM fuel cell power system using multi-input and multi-output fuzzy method

Abstract

• A PEMFC temperature and humidity transient synergy control strategy is proposed. • This method can improve the stack dynamic response capability and power density. • The control performance of this method is verified by experiments. Dynamic hydrothermal management is the critical issue for improving the performance of Proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). In this study, a multi-input and multi-output (MIMO) fuzzy control method is proposed for the hydrothermal management of PEMFC in real time. For PEMFC, stack temperature and relative humidity at cathode are chosen as the control objectives, and the cooling water flow rate and inlet gas humidity at cathode are set as the control variables. To establish the transient synergy control of temperature and humidity, a fuzzy logic controller is constructed. The input parameters of controller include the errors of temperature, humidity and their derivatives. The dynamic performances of temperature and humidity transient synergy control under the disturbance of load current and operating parameters are analyzed. The results show that the temperature and humidity transient synergy control based on MIMO fuzzy method presents faster response speed and better control performance than traditional Proportion Integration Differentiation (PID) control. The output voltage of the proposed control method is 3.14% and 4.21% higher than that of traditional PID controllers. Furthermore, the power density of THTSc is 9.37% higher than that of PID controller.