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Article history: This paper deals with the online checking of the humidification of a Proton Exchange
Received 28 November 2008 Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC). Indeed, drying or flooding can decrease the performance of
Received in revised form the PEMFC and even lead to its destruction. An online humidification diagnosis can allow
22 January 2009 a real-time control. A good indicator of the membrane humidification state is its internal
Accepted 22 January 2009 resistance. As known, the membrane ionic conductivity increases with the membrane
Available online 23 February 2009 water content. This resistance can be calculated at high frequency by dividing the voltage
variation by the current variation. The proposed scheme makes use of measurements of
Keywords: current and voltage ripples coming from the association of a static DC–DC converter and
Proton exchange membrane fuel cell the fuel cell. The experiment thus consists in computing the internal resistance in wet and
Boost converter dry conditions.
Diagnosis Humidification ª 2009 International Association for Hydrogen Energy. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights
Membrane resistance reserved.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ33 383 59 56 64; fax: þ33 383 59 56 53.
E-mail address: melika.hinaje@ensem.inpl-nancy.fr (M. Hinaje).
0360-3199/$ – see front matter ª 2009 International Association for Hydrogen Energy. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.ijhydene.2009.01.076
international journal of hydrogen energy 34 (2009) 2718–2723 2719
Cdl,a Cdl,c
rm
Zw,a Zw,c
ra rc
can be deduced at high frequency, dividing the voltage vari- presents a sketch of the experimental setup. As can be seen in
ation by the current variation: this figure, air is supplied through a humidification unit to
cathode, and pure dry hydrogen from cylinders to anode. The
Dv
rm ¼ (1) humidifier can be shut down by opening the solenoid valve v1
Di HF
so that dry air flows towards fuel cell cathode. This will be
Experimentally, frequency of the alternative current compo- used to vary the humidification state of the fuel cell. A cooling
nent, which enables rm measurement, is chosen so that the system keeps the stack temperature constant. Data acquisi-
phase shift between voltage and current is null [6]. tion cards are used for all necessary control functions such as
In this paper, we present a measurement method for rm that reference setting (gas flows, pressures, and stack
does not need any additional device for generating the high temperature).
frequency current component. Indeed, as fuel cells are low Fig. 3 shows the impedance spectrum of our 500 W PEMFC
voltage generators, it is most often necessary to use a power at 30 A, under a stack temperature of 55 C and a humidifier
electronic converter, in order to increase fuel cell output temperature of 50 C at atmospheric pressure. This experi-
voltage. The current ripple, naturally produced by this mentation was carried out by means of usual impedance
converter, enables rm measurement if the switching frequency spectroscopy method. The intersection with the real axis is
is high enough. We obtain that way a real-time control of the obtained at 2 kHz, it gives the membrane resistance value, in
fuel cell humidification state [7]. Hence, in this lecture, we this case rm ¼ 40 mU.
propose an additional use of the converter associated with the
fuel cell. In the following parts, the test bench is described, then
experimental results are detailed and discussed. 2.2. Boost converter operating principle
Im(Z)
2 kHz
-0.02
-0.04
Fig. 5 – High frequency fuel cell model used for simulating
the fuel cell/boost converter association.
Fig. 3 – PEMFC impedance spectrum (50 mHz–2 kHz). Mean
current: 30 A.
VIN
VOUT ¼ (4)
1a
In normal operating mode, the boost chopper has two a being the duty cycle of the switch (ratio of the switch
working sequences. The first is defined by the switch on-state. conduction duration to the switching period T ). As a ˛ [0, 1], it
It is driven by the switch turn-on, and is characterized by the can be deduced that VOUT VIN: the boost converter enables
following state equations system: voltage increase, which is an advantage when using fuel cells
8 as power sources. The second great advantage of the boost
> di v V þ rL ,iFC
< FC ¼ IN T converter is that its input current is a state variable of the
dt L L (2) system, and thus can be regulated with an usual feedback
: dvOUT ¼ iOUT
>
dt C loop. It is of great interest for fuel cells, as far as fuel cell
current has to be carefully controlled.
where VT is the on-state voltage drop of the switch, and rL the
series resistance of the inductor. If the electric time constant
2.3. Fuel cell/boost chopper association
L/rL of the inductor is far greater than the switching period T of
the converter, this first sequence leads to a linear increase of
In our low voltage application (VOUT ¼ 42 V), unipolar semi-
the inductor current. The second sequence is defined by the
conductor devices are used, in order to reduce conduction and
diode on-state. It is driven by the switch turn-off, and is
turn-off losses. Therefore, a power MOSFET STE180NE10
characterized by the following state equations system:
(100 V, 180 A, 4.5 mU) and a Schottky diode STPS80H100TV
8 (100 V, 2 40 A, 2.2 mU) were chosen for switch S and diode D,
> di v vOUT VD þ rL ,iFC
< FC ¼ IN
dt L L (3) respectively. Since the switching frequency of the converter is
: dvOUT ¼ iFC iOUT
> 25 kHz, the input inductor L was calculated in order to obtain
dt C about 10% current ripple at the rated operating point of our
where VD is the on-state voltage drop of the diode. This fuel cell system (500 W, 12.5 V, 40 A). It was made using soft
sequence results in a linear decrease of the inductor current ferrite cores ETD59-3C90. The inductance value is 100 mH, and
(provided that L/rL >> T ). the series resistance rL is 30 mU. The output capacitance is
In steady state, the input current is periodic, so that the 30 mF, which is computed from the capacitor rms current
mean value of diFC/dt is necessarily equal to zero. That way, (about 22 A for our application) at rated operating point. To
one can easily calculate the mean output voltage VOUT, by this end, we used three aluminium electrolytic components of
integrating diFC/dt equations of system (2) and (3) over a period 10 mF (100 V, 7.3 A) in parallel.
of operation. If the ideal conversion (no losses, i.e. VT ¼ 0, The fuel cell current iFC is regulated by a PID controller. The
VD ¼ 0 and rL ¼ 0) is considered, this results in the following whole system (power electronics structure, parameters of
function of the mean input voltage VIN: passive elements and semiconductor devices, regulation
iFC L iOUT
D
vIN S C vOUT
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