Control Strategies for Prevention of PEMFC Oxygen Starvation: A Review 2021-01-0743

Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) which has advantages of starting fast, high energy density, high efficiency, lower operating temperature and little pollution is widely regarded as one of the most promising energy sources. The PEMFC system includes several subsystems such as air supply subsystem, hydrogen supply subsystem, thermal management subsystem, water management subsystem, energy management subsystem and so on. The Air supply subsystem has great influence on the performance and life of PEMFC stack. Whether oxygen supply in air supply subsystem is sufficient or not will affects reaction rate of fuel, the operating temperature and degradation of PEMFC stack and so on. To solve the issue of oxygen starvation in PEMFC stack, the control strategies for improving dynamic response and preventing air shortage of the PEMFC air supply subsystem are reviewed.

In this paper, the traditional proportional integral differential control, model predictive control, self-adaptive control, sliding mode control, robust control, intelligent control consists of fuzzy logic control, neural network control and composite control are analyzed. In addition, the control oriented model used to calculate the output power is essential in control system, so this part is also studied. In each section, different control methods and models are classified and various investigation techniques for evaluating efficiency of air supply subsystem are discussed, by comparing and summarizing the various control strategies, the prospect of solving the problem of oxygen starvation is put forward. At the end, on the strength of the current status of the research studies, topics, activities that require further research on preventing PEMFC oxygen starvation are discussed.