Nonlinear control of the air feed of a fuel cell

This document presents the design of a hierarchical control to regulate the oxygen excess ratio of a fuel cell. The master controller calculates the necessary air flow to stabilize the oxygen excess ratio at a fixed set point. A nonlinear model based predictive controller (NMPC) using a Volterra series model is used as a master controller. The slave controller, a nonlinear PI, uses the reference of the air flow calculated by the master controller to stabilize the air flow in the compressor and allows reference tracking. The proposed control strategy is applied to full nonlinear model of a fuel cell in which simulations are carried out.