Thermal management subsystem model and temperature control for fuel cells

The temperature distribution is crucial to the safety and lifespan of fuel cell stacks.A dynamic model was developed to analyze the thermal management subsystem of a proton exchange membrane(PEM) fuel cell system.The prediction-based smart PID control algorithm considers the large inertia and large phase delay of the coolant temperature control with a simplified model for the thermal system to predict the stack temperature variations and to minimize the overshoot by ahead-oftime control.Simulations and tests show that the control algorithm performs well with temperature variations less than ±0.5℃.