Fault Diagnosis and Fault Tolerant Control of PEM Fuel Cell Systems

Abstract

The energy generation systems based on fuel cells are complex since they involve thermal, fluidic and electrochemical phenomena. Moreover, they need a set of auxiliary elements such as valves, compressor, sensors, regulators, etc. to make the fuel cell work at the pre-established optimal operating point. For these reasons, they are vulnerable to faults that can cause the stop or the permanent damage of the fuel cell. Therefore, it is useful to use systematic techniques, like the recent methods of fault-tolerant control (FTC), to guarantee the safe operation of the fuel cell systems. The Fault Diagnosis of PEM fuel cell systems using a model-based methodology is addressed in Sect. 2.2, whereas the FTC based on Model Predictive Control is addressed in Sect. 2.3). This chapter is complementary to Chap. 3, showing that the proposed control architecture with two actuators adds FTC capabilities to the fuel cell systems.