Active Fault-Tolerant Control for PEM Fuel Cells Under Cathode Flooding

The proper fault-tolerant control (FTC) is a key issue to extend the lifetime of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs). This article proposes an FTC algorithm to realize performance recovery under flooding. A water transfer model of the PEMFCs is established and verified, and a flooding fault indicator is developed for diagnosing the fault in real time. Thereafter, an active fault-tolerant controller based on the water transfer model and the fault indicator is developed in order to recover the performance characteristics of the PEMFCs. Experimental results show that the proposed fault indicator can accurately identify flooding, and the fault-tolerant controller can effectively suppress the water management failure. Thereby improving the reliability of the PEMFCs.