Control of Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell Intake System: A High-Order Fully Actuated System Approach

The air supply system of the proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) has complex characteristics such as multiple inputs and multiple outputs, strong nonlinear coupling, and internal and external disturbances. Controlling the airflow and cathode pressure in coordination is a great challenge. To deal with this challenge, this paper designs a novel strategy based on high-order fully actuated (HOFA) systems theory. First, the fourth-order underactuated system of PEMFC is transformed into an HOFA system, and an extended state observer is designed to estimate unmodeled dynamics and unknown disturbances and then, based on the characteristics of the HOFA system, a parametric control law is designed to control the airflow and cathode pressure in coordination. Finally, the effectiveness of the HOFA system is validated on a PEMFC air supply system test bench, and the results suggest that our designed strategy can realize accurate and coordinated control of the airflow and cathode pressure, outperforming some existing advanced methods.