GOALI: Estimation and Control of Water in PEM Fuel Cells

摘要燃料电池（FC）系统的发电涉及其化学、流体、机械、热、电气和电子子系统的各种属性的相互作用。本文主要研究质子交换膜（PEM）燃料电池中反应物和水的动力学过程。虽然计算流体动力学模型已经被有效地用于表示这一过程，并有助于燃料电池系统的设计，但它们很难用于大型堆的校准，而且对于控制设计来说过于复杂。任何用于水管理的基于模型的控制方案都必须充分权衡简单性，同时仍然能够预测蒸汽和液相传输的动态行为，从而预测电极泛油。该项目的目标是提取两相、反应扩散、空间分布的水动力学模型，用于参数化和基于模型的燃料电池控制。将采用离散化和模型降阶技术来揭示主要过程和参数。可辨识问题和参数收敛问题的解析方法将辅以独特的实验方法。该项目的结果将与NIST共同用于制定fc中水分参数化和估计的指导方针。这些模型将在项目的最后阶段用于水管理，即预测、检测和避免洪水或脱水。燃料电池系统有望成为传统能源系统（如燃气轮机和内燃机）的一个有吸引力的替代品，因为它们更清洁，更省油。更重要的是，它们实现了减少对外国石油依赖的目标，并简化了向氢基经济的过渡。然而，在燃料电池技术在运输和固定动力应用中成功商业化之前，必须解决增加这些系统的使用寿命和稳健性的关键需求。该项目旨在通过为这些燃料电池系统开发和实施先进的控制方法来解决这一挑战。

AbstractPower generation from Fuel Cell (FC) systems involve interplay of various attributesfrom its chemical, fluid, mechanical, thermal, electrical, and electronic subsystems. Thisstudy concentrates on the process that describes the reactant and water dynamics in aproton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells. While computational fluid dynamic modelshave been gainfully used to represent this process and aid in the design of fuel cellsystems, they are difficult to calibrate for large stacks and too complex for control design.Any model-based control scheme used for water management must adequately trade-offsimplicity while still being able to predict the dynamic behavior of the vapor and liquidphase transport, and consequently electrode flooding. The goal of this project is to extracttractable models of the two-phase, reaction-diffusion, spatially distributed waterdynamics for parameterization and model-based control of fuel cells. Discretization andmodel order reduction techniques will be employed to reveal the dominant processes andparameters. Analytic methods for the identifiably and parameter convergence problemwill be supplemented with unique experimental methods. The results from this projectwill be used jointly with NIST to develop guidelines for parameterization and estimationof water in FCs. The models will be used in the last phase of the project for watermanagement, namely, predicting, detecting, and avoiding flooding or de-hydration.Fuel cell systems promise to be an attractive alternative to traditional energy systemssuch as gas turbines and internal combustion engines, as they are cleaner and more fuelefficient.More importantly, they enable the goals of reduced dependence on foreign oiland ease the transition to a hydrogen based economy. However, before the successfulcommercialization of Fuel Cell technology in transportation and stationary powerapplications, a critical need for increasing the life-time and robustness of these systemshas to be addressed. This project seeks to address this challenge by developing andimplementing advanced control methodologies for these fuel cell systems.