Thermal management of an open-cathode PEMFC based on constraint generalized predictive control and optimized strategy

The application of open-cathode proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) has been extended to unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), light duty vehicles and other fields, but its performance is highly affected by the temperature fluctuation of stack and ambient temperature. This paper aims to design a thermal management system to achieve higher stack performance and lower fan power consumption by considering ambient temperature and practical application. To do that, a new temperature control strategy is first proposed by studying the relationship between optimal operating temperature and ambient temperature. Then, a model of 1000 W stack including thermal system is built for designing a temperature controller based on constraint generalized predictive control (CGPC). After that, the CGPC controller is enhanced by adding optimized strategy and control rules related to practical application to avoid irreversible damage especially when the current density increases. Finally, the control system with enhanced CGPC is effectively reduce the average error compared with PI control, which is only 0.032 °C. The proposed control strategy with additional control rules is valid by experiments and shows higher performance and lower fan duty cycle of 28.9 % compared with manufacture's default strategy. Thus, the proposed method has significant for widespread application of PEMFC.