Modeling and Control of Air Supply in Multi-Stack Fuel Cell Systems for Aircraft Application

Abstract

This study demonstrates the modeling and control of the air supply path of a Multi-Stack Fuel Cell System (MFCS) demonstrator. The control objective is to regulate the stack feed pressure and the mass flows through the two fuel cell stacks with a mass flow controller (MFC) and two throttle vales. The plant is represented by an equivalent circuit model. The actuators are modeld with a first order dynamic. Model paramters are identified from measurement data. A state feedback and integral error feedback is implemented from the linearized plant. The model shows well agreement with measurements and the controller reveals a satisfiying performance.