Implementation, modeling and control of an experimental PEM Fuel Cell Stack Station

Abstract

This work presents the results of the project Implementation, modeling and control of an experimental PEM Fuel Cell Stack Station done in the 2010/11 academic year at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. The project is divided in two main sections: first, a technical work was done on the Test Station 4 at the Fuel Cell Lab of the Institut de Robòtica i Informàtica Industrial (IRII) in order to implement the instrumentation and control for a proton exchange membrane fuel cell stack. All the details on the devices and the programming on LabVIEW for the station are presented in this report. Second, a non-isothermal thermic model of the fuel cell stack was developed and validated for both the steady state and the transitory state cases. The model comprises both, simplicity for control purposes and enough accuracy to predict the stack spatial and dynamic temperature variation.