A decoupling control of air supply for the PEM fuel cell with slide mode-active disturbance rejection controller

The air supply subsystem is crucial for optimizing proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs). This study develops a transient model for the air subsystem and proposes a control strategy that decouples air pressure and flow using sliding mode-active disturbance rejection control (SM-ADRC). In this study, adjustments to the air compressor speed and the opening of the back-pressure valve are utilized to achieve this control strategy. The sliding mode-extended state observer (SM-ESO) is employed to estimate and compensate for uncertainties within the system, while the sliding mode-nonlinear state error feedback (SM-NLSEF) is used to simultaneously control air flow and pressure. The study evaluates the performance of the SM-ADRC controller across various scenarios and environmental pressures. Evaluations show that the SM-ADRC controller significantly outperforms traditional methods like Fuzzy-ADRC, ADRC, SMC, and PID, with overshoot reductions of 18.2%, 34.1%, 42.5%, and 63.7%, respectively, and adjustment time under 1 s. Additionally, SM-ADRC achieves a 4.1% and 1.8% improvement in efficiency compared to PID and ADRC.