Active disturbance rejection control strategy applied to cathode humidity control in PEMFC system

Water management of proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is critical to fuel cell performance. Appropriate PEMFC humidity can not only improve the performance and efficiency of the fuel cell, but also prevent irreversible degradation of internal compositions such as catalysts and membrane. In this paper, a dynamic water management model of PEMFC system is established, and an Active Disturbance Rejection Control (ADRC) strategy is proposed for balancing the cathode humidity of PEMFC. The simulation results show that compared with the traditional proportion integral derivative (PID) control and Fuzzy-PID control, the ADRC strategy can effectively shorten the response time, reduce the overshoot, improve the energy efficiency. Moreover, the performances of PEMFC using ADRC control strategy under different temperature and pressure condition are discussed. Furthermore, the power generation efficiency of PEMFC under ADRC humidity control is 2.36% and 1.48% higher than that of traditional PID and Fuzzy-PID control, respectively.