Operating Temperature Systemic Management of a Fuel Cell System Considering the Impact on the Power Electronics Performances

Abstract

For each fuel cell (FC) system design, a constant operating temperature is frequently chosen to maximize its efficiency. Nevertheless, the temperature variation leads to changing the FC output at a given power. This adjustment in the FC current and voltage impacts the power electronics performance, thus influencing the performance of the fuel cell hybrid electric vehicle (FC-HEV). Therefore, this paper investigates the performance of coupling the FC and power electronics to choose this operating temperature. Firstly, an operating temperature adjustment model of the Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) system is established. The efficiency of the powertrain based on an embedded highperformance active switched quasi-Z-Source inverter (HP-ASqZSI) at various FC operating voltages is secondly realized by theoretical analysis. Opal-RT-based real-time simulation is then performed to validate the performance of the FC-HEV system against various temperatures in terms of efficiency and hydrogen consumption. Simulation results indicate that increasing the FC operating temperature from 25°C to 60°C and 70°C results in an improved FC-HEV efficiency by 1.09% and 1.14%, respectively. Moreover, the average total hydrogen consumption of the FC system is also decreased by 21.23% and 29.34%, respectively over the lowest operating temperature under the studied Artemis driving cycle.