Analysis of design parameters in anodic recirculation system based on ejector technology for PEM fuel cells: A new approach in designing

In this study, the anodic recirculation system (ARS) based on ejector technology in polymer electrolyte membrane PEM fuel cell is studied with employing a theoretical model. A practical method is presented for selecting or designing the ejector in an ARS, that offers the best selection or design. A comprehensive parametric study is performed on the design parameters of a PEM fuel cell stack and an ARS ejector. Four geometrical parameters consist of cell active area, cell number, nozzle throat diameter, and mixing chamber diameter in the design of ARS are intended. The effect of each contributes to the overall system performance parameters is studied. In this parametric study, the correlation between stack design parameters and ejector design parameters are studied. Eventually, based on the results, two dimensionless parameters are useful in the design process are proposed.     

Cobalt molybdenum carbides as anode electrocatalyst for proton exchange membrane fuel cell

Cobalt molybdenum (Co-Mo) carbides were prepared by the carburization of Co-Mo oxides at temperatures of 723–973 K in a stream of CH₄/H₂ gas. The carburized catalysts were evaluated using a single-stack fuel cell and three-electrode cell. The results showed high activities for the anodic electrooxidation of hydrogen over the Co-Mo catalysts carburized at 873 and 923 K. The 873 K carburized Co-Mo catalyst had the highest activity and achieved 10.9% of the performance of a commercial Pt/C catalyst in a single-stack fuel cell. The XRD, TPC, TPR and XPS results showed that the Co-Mo oxycarbide in the bulk and on the surface are the active species for the hydrogen oxidation reaction.     

An application of indirect model reference adaptive control to a low-power proton exchange membrane fuel cell

Nonlinearity and the time-varying dynamics of fuel cell systems make it complex to design a controller for improving output performance. This paper introduces an application of a model reference adaptive control to a low-power proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell system, which consists of three main components: a fuel cell stack, an air pump to supply air, and a solenoid valve to adjust hydrogen flow. From the system perspective, the dynamic model of the PEM fuel cell stack can be expressed as a multivariable configuration of two inputs, hydrogen and air-flow rates, and two outputs, cell voltage and current. The corresponding transfer functions can be identified off-line to describe the linearized dynamics with a finite order at a certain operating point, and are written in a discrete-time auto-regressive moving-average model for on-line estimation of parameters. This provides a strategy of regulating the voltage and current of the fuel cell by adaptively adjusting the flow rates of air and hydrogen. Experiments show that the proposed adaptive controller is robust to the variation of fuel cell system dynamics and power request. Additionally, it helps decrease fuel consumption and relieves the DC/DC converter in regulating the fluctuating cell voltage.     

Analysis and control of a fuel delivery system considering a two-phase anode model of the polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell stack

The fuel delivery system using both an ejector and a blower for a PEM fuel cell stack is introduced as a fuel efficiency configuration because of the possibility of hydrogen recirculation dependent upon load states.A high pressure difference between the cathode and anode could potentially damage the thin polymer electrolyte membrane. Therefore, the hydrogen pressure imposed to the stack should follow any change of the cathode pressure. In addition, stoichiometric ratio of the hydrogen should be maintained at a constant to prevent a fuel starvation at abrupt load changes.Furthermore, liquid water in the anode gas flow channels should be purged out in time to prevent flooding in the channels and other layers. The purging control also reduces the impurities concentration in cells to improve the cell performance.We developed a set of control oriented dynamic models that include a anode model considering the two-phase phenomenon and system components The model is used to design and optimize a state feedback controller along with an observer that controls the fuel pressure and stoichiometric ratio, whereby purging processes are also considered. Finally, included is static and dynamic analysis with respect to tracking and rejection performance of the proposed control.     

Multiple model predictive control for a hybrid proton exchange membrane fuel cell system

This paper presents a hierarchical predictive control strategy to optimize both power utilization and oxygen control simultaneously for a hybrid proton exchange membrane fuel cell/ultracapacitor system. The control employs fuzzy clustering-based modeling, constrained model predictive control, and adaptive switching among multiple models. The strategy has three major advantages. First, by employing multiple piecewise linear models of the nonlinear system, we are able to use linear models in the model predictive control, which significantly simplifies implementation and can handle multiple constraints. Second, the control algorithm is able to perform global optimization for both the power allocation and oxygen control. As a result, we can achieve the optimization from the entire system viewpoint, and a good tradeoff between transient performance of the fuel cell and the ultracapacitor can be obtained. Third, models of the hybrid system are identified using real-world data from the hybrid fuel cell system, and models are updated online. Therefore, the modeling mismatch is minimized and high control accuracy is achieved. Study results demonstrate that the control strategy is able to appropriately split power between fuel cell and ultracapacitor, avoid oxygen starvation, and so enhance the transient performance and extend the operating life of the hybrid system.     

Analysis and control of a hybrid fuel delivery system for a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell

A polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEM FC) system as a power source used in mobile applications should be able to produce electric power continuously and dynamically to meet the demand of the driver by consuming the fuel, hydrogen. The hydrogen stored in the tank is supplied to the anode of the stack by a fuel delivery system (FDS) that is comprised of supply and recirculation lines controlled by different actuators. Design of such a system and its operation should take into account several aspects, particularly efficient fuel usage and safe operation of the stack.     

Low power proton exchange membrane fuel cell system identification and adaptive control

This paper proposes a systematic method of system identification and control of a proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell. This fuel cell can be used for low-power communication devices involving complex electrochemical reactions of nonlinear and time-varying dynamic properties. From a system point of view, the dynamic model of PEM fuel cell is reduced to a configuration of two inputs, hydrogen and air flow rates, and two outputs, cell voltage and current. The corresponding transfer functions describe linearized subsystem dynamics with finite orders and time-varying parameters, which are expressed as discrete-time auto-regression moving-average with auxiliary input models for system identification by the recursive least square algorithm. In the experiments, a pseudo-random binary sequence of hydrogen or air flow rate is fed to a single fuel cell device to excite its dynamics. By measuring the corresponding output signals, each subsystem transfer function of reduced order is identified, while the unmodeled, higher-order dynamics and disturbances are described by the auxiliary input term. This provides a basis of adaptive control strategy to improve the fuel cell performance in terms of efficiency, as well as transient and steady state specifications. Simulation shows that adaptive controller is robust to the variation of fuel cell system dynamics, and it has proved promising from the experimental results.     

Performance prediction of proton exchange membrane fuel cells using a three-dimensional model

In this study a steady-state three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of a proton exchange membrane fuel cell is developed and presented for a single cell. A complete set of conservation equations of mass, momentum, species, energy transport, and charge is considered with proper account of electrochemical kinetics based on Butler–Volmer equation. The catalyst layer structure is considered to be agglomerate. This model enables us to investigate the flow field, current distribution, and cell voltage over the fuel cell which includes the anode and cathode collector plates, gas channels, catalyst layers, gas diffusion layers, and the membrane. The numerical solution is based on a finite-volume method in a single solution domain. In this investigation a CFD code was used as the core solver for the transport equations, while mathematical models for the main physical and electrochemical phenomena were devised into the solver using user-developed subroutines. Three-dimensional results of the flow structure, species concentrations and current distribution are presented for bipolar plates with square cross section of straight flow channels. A polarization curve is obtained for the fuel cell under consideration. A comparison between the polarization curves obtained from the current study and the corresponding available experimental data is presented and a reasonable agreement is obtained. Such CFD model can be used as a tool in the development and optimization of PEM fuel cells.     

Transport phenomena within the porous cathode for a proton exchange membrane fuel cell

A two-phase, one-dimensional steady model is developed to analyze the coupled phenomena of cathode flooding and mass-transport limiting for the porous cathode electrode of a proton exchange membrane fuel cell. In the model, the catalyst layer is treated not as an interface between the membrane and gas diffusion layer, but as a separate computational domain with finite thickness and pseudo-homogenous structure. Furthermore, the liquid water transport across the porous electrode is driven by the capillary force based on Darcy's law. And the gas transport is driven by the concentration gradient based on Fick's law. Additionally, through Tafel kinetics, the transport processes of gas and liquid water are coupled. From the numerical results, it is found that although the catalyst layer is thin, it is very crucial to better understand and more correctly predict the concurrent phenomena inside the electrode, particularly, the flooding phenomena. More importantly, the saturation jump at the interface of the gas diffusion layer and catalyst layers is captured, when the continuity of the capillary pressure is imposed on the interface. Elsewise, the results show further that the flooding phenomenon in the CL is much more serious than that in the GDL, which has a significant influence on the mass transport of the reactants. Moreover, the saturation level inside the cathode is determined, to a great extent, by the surface overpotential, the absolute permeability of the porous electrode, and the boundary value of saturation at the gas diffusion layer-gas channel interface. In order to prevent effectively flooding, it should remove firstly the liquid water accumulating inside the CL and keep the boundary value of liquid saturation as low as possible.     

Anode gas recirculation behavior of a fuel ejector in hybrid solid oxide fuel cell systems: Performance evaluation in three operational modes

In this paper, a theoretical model for the performance monitoring and fault detection of fuel ejectors in the hybrid solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) system is proposed. The procedures of using the model to analyze ejector properties such as the primary mass flow rate, the secondary mass flow rate, the recirculation ratio and steam to carbon ratio (STCR) are introduced. Based on the model, the anode gas recirculation performances of a hybrid SOFC system are studied under various operating conditions. Results show that the model can be used to evaluate the performance of ejector not only in the critical mode but also in the subcritical and back flow modes, which is especially useful at SOFC off-design operating conditions such as start up, load changes and shut down.     

Analysis of the water and thermal management in proton exchange membrane fuel cell systems

Water and thermal management is essential to the performance of proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell system. The key components in water and thermal management system, namely the fuel cell stack, radiator, condenser and membrane humidifier are all modeled analytically in this paper. Combined with a steady-state, one-dimensional, isothermal fuel cell model, a simple channel-groove pressure drop model is included in the stack analysis. Two compact heat exchangers, radiator and condenser are sized and rated to maintain the heat and material balance. The influence of non-condensable gas is also considered in the calculation of the condenser. Based on the proposed methodology, the effects of two important operating parameters, namely the air stoichiometric ratio and the cathode outlet pressure, and three kinds of anode humidification, namely recycling humidification, membrane humidification and recycling combining membrane humidification are analyzed. The methodology in this article is helpful to the design of water and thermal management system in fuel cell systems.     

A general model of proton exchange membrane fuel cell

In this study, a general model of proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) was constructed, implemented and employed to simulate the fluid flow, heat transfer, species transport, electrochemical reaction, and current density distribution, especially focusing on liquid water effects on PEMFC performance. The model is a three-dimensional and unsteady one with detailed thermo-electrochemistry, multi-species, and two-phase interaction with explicit gas–liquid interface tracking by using the volume-of-fluid (VOF) method. The general model was implemented into the commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software package FLUENT^® v6.2, with its user-defined functions (UDFs). A complete PEMFC was considered, including membrane, gas diffusion layers (GDLs), catalyst layers, gas flow channels, and current collectors. The effects of liquid water on PEMFC with serpentine channels were investigated. The results showed that this general model of PEMFC can be a very useful tool for the optimization of practical engineering designs of PEMFC.     

A gas management strategy for anode recirculation in a proton exchange membrane fuel cell

The anode configuration and gas management strategy are two of factors that affect the energy efficiency of a proton exchange membrane fuel cell. In order to improve the hydrogen utilization, unused hydrogen can be recirculated to the inlet using a pump. However, impurities diffusing from the cathode to the anode may cause the dilution of hydrogen in the anode. As a result, a gas management strategy is required for the anode recirculation configuration. In this preliminary study, a novel configuration for anode recirculation and a gas management strategy are proposed and verified by experiments. Two valves are installed in the recirculation line. The anode is operated in four modes (dead-end, recirculation, compression, and purge), and the real-time local current density (LCD) is monitored for gas management purposes. The results show that the LCD distribution is uniform during the recirculation mode and nonuniform during the dead-end and compression modes. With this configuration and gas management strategy, the cycle duration is increased by a factor of 6.5.     

Transient model of oxygen-starved proton exchange membrane fuel cell for predicting voltages and hydrogen emissions

Transfer (crossover) leaks initiated by the chemical deterioration of the PEM and the resulting performance degradation has been previously identified as one the primary life-limiting factors in fuel cells. The leaks result in reduced oxygen levels in affected cells, where a secondary factor intimately related to this is high hydrogen emissions in the cathode exhaust when some cells operate in fully-oxygen-starved conditions. This paper builds on previous work that developed a unified fuel cell model that predicts cell voltage behavior under driving (normal) and driven (oxygen-starved) conditions, where this latest analysis now explicitly includes hydrogen pumping and emissions release when operating under oxygen-depleted conditions. In addition to considering diffusion effects and electrochemical effects, the model tracks the evolution of hydrogen in the cell cathode when no oxygen remains to generate water. The voltage response of the model under normal (non-starved) conditions is first validated for steady-state and transient (current step-change) conditions against previously published experiments, and then the model is used to simulate the cell voltage and stack hydrogen emissions behavior measured from three different commercially available fuel cell stacks. In the first fuel cell stack, a 9-cell commercial short stack, only one cell was fully oxygen-starved. Excellent agreement is seen between the measured and simulated hydrogen release concentrations (where air injection was used downstream of the stack to ensure adequate oxygen levels for measurement with a catalytic hydrogen sensor and to condense water vapor in the exhaust), where the role of hydrogen pumping is seen to contribute significantly to the release behavior. The first fuel cell stack is then used transiently in comparison with testing performed where the hydrogen injection level in the cell is changed quickly, where the model gives good agreement with the measured emission response and cell voltage behavior. Further comparisons with test data from a second and third 10-cell commercial short stack models operated with stack inlet hydrogen injection show good agreement with measured emissions onset versus current, where the observed threshold of starvation and emissions occurs a few percent sooner in the third model than the simulation, but the overall behavior is well predicted.     

A model for hydrogen sulfide poisoning in proton exchange membrane fuel cells

A polymer-electrolyte fuel cell model that incorporates the effects of hydrogen sulfide contaminant on performance is developed. The model is transient, fully two-phase and non-isothermal and includes a complex kinetic mechanism to describe the electrode reactions. Comparisons between the simulation results and data in the literature demonstrate that known trends are well captured. The effects of temperature and relative humidity variations in the anode stream are investigated, with further comparisons to experimental data and a proposed explanation for the nonlinear behaviour observed in the experiments of Mohtadi et al. [R. Mohatadi, W.-K. Lee, J. van Zee, Appl. Catal. B 56 (2005) 37–42)]. Extensions to the model and future work are discussed.     

Anode water removal and cathode gas diffusion layer flooding in a proton exchange membrane fuel cell

Anode water removal (AWR) is studied as a diagnostic tool to assess cathode gas diffusion layer (GDL) flooding in PEM fuel cells. This method uses a dry hydrogen stream to remove product water from the cathode, showing ideal fuel cell performance in the absence of GDL mass transfer limitations related to water. When cathode GDL flooding is limiting, the cell voltage increases as the hydrogen stoichiometry is increased. Several cathode GDLs were studied to determine the effect of microporous layer (MPL) and PTFE coating. The largest voltage gains occur with the use of cathode GDLs without an MPL since these GDLs are prone to higher liquid water saturation. Multiple GDLs are studied on the cathode side to exacerbate GDL flooding conditions to further confirm the mechanism of the AWR process. Increased temperature and lower cathode RH allow for greater overall water removal so the voltage improvement occurs faster, though this leads to quicker membrane dehydration.     

Maximum power point tracking of a proton exchange membrane fuel cell system using PSO-PID controller

Fuel cells output power depends on the operating conditions, including cell temperature, oxygen partial pressure, hydrogen partial pressure, and membrane water content. In each particular condition, there is only one unique operating point for a fuel cell system with the maximum output. Thus, a maximum power point tracking (MPPT) controller is needed to increase the efficiency of the fuel cell systems. In this paper an efficient method based on the particle swarm optimization (PSO) and PID controller (PSO-PID) is proposed for MPPT of the proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells. The closed loop system includes the PEM fuel cell, boost converter, battery and PSO-PID controller. PSO-PID controller adjusts the operating point of the PEM fuel cell to the maximum power by tuning of the boost converter duty cycle. To demonstrate the performance of the proposed algorithm, simulation results are compared with perturb and observe (P&O) and sliding mode (SM) algorithms under different operating conditions. PSO algorithm with fast convergence, high accuracy and very low power fluctuations tracks the maximum power point of the fuel cell system.     

Modelling of proton exchange membrane fuel cell performance based on semi-empirical equations

Using semi-empirical equations for modeling a proton exchange membrane fuel cell is proposed for providing a tool for the design and analysis of fuel cell total systems. The focus of this study is to derive an empirical model including process variations to estimate the performance of fuel cell without extensive calculations. The model take into account not only the current density but also the process variations, such as the gas pressure, temperature, humidity, and utilization to cover operating processes, which are important factors in determining the real performance of fuel cell. The modelling results are compared well with known experimental results. The comparison shows good agreements between the modeling results and the experimental data. The model can be used to investigate the influence of process variables for design optimization of fuel cells, stacks, and complete fuel cell power system.     

A review of high-temperature proton exchange membrane fuel cell (HT-PEMFC) system

This paper provides information encompassing the recent discovery of the High Temperature Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (HT-PEMFC) focusing on systems requirement. To have a reliable power production and higher durability level, a proper system must be applied in both normal and especially in transient operations. To date many issues of HT-PEMFC especially in durability and performance still unsolved. This article is written to provide clear information about the research undergo and must be the focus in order to produce an efficient performance. Information about the advantages towards Low Temperature Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (LT-PEMFC), the main components, and the mode of operation also discussed. In-depth research needs to be conducted into the innovative design and development of HT-PEMFC components and its system since these are the key factors for optimum performance.