Robustness Analyses of PEMFC Systems

This thesis analyzes the robustness of 3kW proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) systems, and applies the PEMFC to develop a stationary hybrid power system. This thesis discuss two topics: robustness analysis for PEMFC control, and the development of hybrid power system.
First, we apply robust control to control the hydrogen flow rate and temperature of a 3kW PEMFC module, to improve the hydrogen efficiency and energy efficiency, respectively. We cooperate with M-Field to analyze the system variation and gaps of different PEMFC modules in the production line. The result shows that robust controllers designed based on a PEMFC can be directly applied to other PEMFCs to improve performance. That is, we do not need to design a specific controller for each PEMFC, but can implement a general controller for the same type of PEMFC in the production line. We then implement the designed robust controller on a microcontroller to develop the hybrid power system.
Second, we use the aforementioned 3kW PEMFC module to build a hybrid power system that is verified in our lab. We develop robust controllers for both the PEMFC and the DC/DC converter to improve system efficiencies, and experimentally verify the performance improvement. We also build a Matlab/SimPowerSystem model and test the effects of different power management strategies. The model can be applied to enhance system efficiency and reduce the fuel consumption, and further used for developing custom-made hybrid power system in the future.