Mechatronics in Fuel Cell Systems

Abstract

Power generation from Fuel Cells (FC) requires the integration of chemical, fluid, mechanical, thermal, electrical, and electronic subsystems. This integration presents many challenges and opportunities in the mechatronics field. In this paper we highlight important design issues and pose problems that require mechatronics solutions. We start by presenting the design process of a toy school bus powered by hydrogen. The FC toy bus was designed during an undergraduate student project. It was an effective and rewarding educational activity that revealed complex systems issues and familiarized us with the FC technology.

Adaptive Control of a Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Ultra-Capacitor Hybrid System

“…2. Similar as well as alternate methods of interfacing fuel cells and battery/ultracapacitors can be found in [5], [7], [22], [31], and [32]. The fuel cell and ultra-capacitor are connected in parallel.…”

“…Note that and are not differentiated as they are treated as constant parameters in the adaptive control approach (24) Using (10) and treating the ultra-capacitor as a pure capacitor, we have (25) where is the capacitance. Manipulating (5) and combining it with (25) yields (26) From the definitions of and in (11) and (20), respectively, can be written as (27) From (10), (14), (26), and (27), we have (28) Also, from (5), (11), and (14) we have (29) The derivative of along system trajectories can be obtained from (24) using (14), (15)-(18), (28), and (29), and noting that (30) as follows (31) where (32) It should be noted from (10) and (29) that the symmetric matrix can be guaranteed to be positive definite by selecting and such that , [37]. This is because and are constant and are bounded based on the range of operating conditions.…”

Automotive Powertrain Control - A Survey

“…The main subsystems include the fuel cell stack, hydrogen and air supply systems, cooling system, humidification system, and the power conditioning system. Many fuel cell control problems have been discussed in [123,124]. In the subsequent discussion, we will highlight the key features of the control oriented fuel cell models, the main control problems and the characteristics of the associated solutions.…”

“…Other activities concentrating on specific phenomena such as water diffusion and transportation have led to other special purpose models [131][132][133]. Intensive studies are still underway to understand and characterize the complicated mechanisms and phenomena associated with water diffusion and transport across the membrane and along the reactant channel [124]. Much of the effort on CFD (computational fluid dynamic) modeling is expected to shed light on the humidity treatment of fuel cell systems at the microscopic level and aid in control oriented model development and control design [134].…”

Nonlinear Generalized Predictive Control for Air Flow RateRegulation in the PEM Fuel Cell System

“…The Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) fuel cell standing for the hydrogen energy has developed maturely. With its advantage of maneuverable output power, low operation temperature, high current density and quick start, the PEM fuel cell is suitable for the transportation application and distributed generation [1,2].…”