Temperature management of liquid-cooled fuel cells based on active disturbance rejection control

In the proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) systems, the operating temperature affects the gas transport, reaction rate and water balance inside the PEMFC stack, thus affecting the output performance and lifetime of the stack. Therefore, it is necessary to study the thermal management methods and control strategies to maintain the stack temperature at the expected value. A thermal management system model of the PEMFC based on the electrochemical reaction and thermodynamics is established. This study proposes a novel active disturbance rejection controller (ADRC) to solve the problem of excessive temperature fluctuation of liquid-cooled stack with the dynamic load current changes. The simulation data show that compared with the PID, Fuzzy-PID and PSO-PID controllers for the cooling fan, the overshoot amount of the coolant inlet temperature with the ADRC is significantly reduced from 1.02 %, 0.77 % and 0.26 % to 0.07 %, and the integral of time absolute error (ITAE) is decreased from 5.299 × 10⁴, 5.206 × 10⁴ and 1.255 × 10⁴ to 3.930 × 10³, respectively. The degree of temperature fluctuation is reduced and the parasitic power does not significantly increase. Therefore, the ADRC proposed in this study improves the temperature control effect of the PEMFC stack, which is conducive to enhancing the stack performance.