engleski

Optimal Power Management and Control for an Automotive Fuel Cell System

Due to relatively slow dynamics of water management and the fuel and oxidant supply to the reaction sites a fuel cell cannot respond fast enough to the dynamic load changes. When applying a fuel cell to mobile applications like cars and scooters it is therefore necessary to combine it with an energy storage device, i.e. a supercapacitor, which can respond to the dynamic load changes requested by the driver at any instant. In order to find out how this combination shall be controlled and what would be the optimal ratio between the fuel cell power and the power delivered by the supercapacitor device a model has been developed using MATLAB/Simulink. Models for the main system parts like fuel cell, supercapacitor, DC/DC converters, electrical motor and dynamical load have been created and combined to a fuel cell system for automotive applications. A control system for the DC/DC converters of both fuel cell and supercapacitor is applied and different power configurations are simulated using the federal test procedure FTP72. Thus information on the optimal power ratio P(Supercap)/P(FuelCell) with respect to economic viability and the drivers behaviour can be gained, which might be helpful in the design of a real fuel cell vehicle.

Fuel cell control; automotive fuel cell; dynamic load changes; supercapacitor

ASME Paper EFC2007-39160