Use of Optimal Controls to Mitigate Competing Performance Objectives in a Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell System

Abstract

This paper describes a model predictive control (MPC) scheme as implemented on a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell system. The goal of this work is to reduce parasitic power consumption of the system, improving net system efficiency. The MPC is capable of balancing this performance objective (reducing power loss) with the objective of maintaining oxygen excess ratio, a parameter identified as essential to reliable fuel cell operation. Two configurations of a MPC were implemented in SIMULINK and connected to a dynamic system model in EASY5 using the XML (extensible markup language) metadata interchange (XMI) interface. Substantial improvements were noted on one of the MPC configurations compared to the reference feedforward and proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller.