ARTICLE IN PRESS

Control Engineering Practice 17 (2009) 874–885

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Control Engineering Practice

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/conengprac

Design and experimental validation of a constrained MPC for the air feed
of a fuel cell
J.K. Gruber a,, M. Doll b, C. Bordons a
a
Dep. de Ingenierı́a de Sistemas y Automática, Universidad de Sevilla, Spain
b
Institut für Systemdynamik, Universität Stuttgart, Germany

a r t i c l e in f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Fuel cells represent an area of great industrial interest due to the possibility to generate clean energy,
Received 18 July 2008 especially PEM (Polymer Electrolyte Membrane or Proton Exchange Membrane) fuel cells for their use in
Accepted 10 February 2009 stationary and automotive applications. The oxygen excess ratio expressing the proportion between
Available online 14 March 2009
oxygen reacting in the cells and oxygen entering the stack is widely used to guarantee safety and to
Keywords: reach a high performance. To control the oxygen excess ratio a model predictive control (MPC) has been
Model predictive control developed using the compressor motor voltage to manipulate the air flow rate entering the fuel cell.
Fuel cell The design of the MPC is carried out with a commercial fuel cell. The proposed MPC is implemented and
Control design validated in experiments and compared with the original built-in controller. The behaviour of the
Identification
system and the controller is illustrated by means of experimental results.
Air feed control
& 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Fuel cells are electrochemical devices that generate electrical
energy from chemical reactants continuously, this while fuel and
oxidant are provided. Although they were invented more than a
century ago, they have received a great deal of attention in the last
decades as good candidates for clean electricity generation both in
stationary and automotive applications. There are many unre-
solved issues regarding materials, manufacturing and mainte-
nance, automatic control being one of the most important
ones. There are many types of fuel cells, this work being focussed
on PEM (Polymer Electrolyte Membrane or Proton Exchange
Membrane) cells, which run at low temperature and show
fast dynamical response, high power density, small size, low
corrosion and high efficiency, which make them suitable for
mobile applications (Rodatz, Paganelli, Sciarretta, & Guzzella,
2005; Stefanopoulou & Suh, 2007). It is clear that good
performance of these devices is closely related to the kind of
control that is used, so a study of new control alternatives is
justified. It is clear that implementing and studying advanced
controllers are important issues for improving efficiency.
Hydrogen and oxygen must be supplied to the fuel cell in order
to maintain the electrochemical reaction. The main control
variable in PEMFC power systems is the air flow which is supplied
by a compressor. Hydrogen is usually stored in a pressurised tank,
so it is fed through a fast opening valve to track a desired ratio of
 Corresponding author. Tel.: +34 954 488 161; fax: +34 954 487 340.
E-mail address: jgruber@cartuja.us.es (J.K. Gruber).
the air flow. The ratio between the oxygen consumed due to the
electrochemical reaction and the oxygen flow generated by the
compressor is denoted as oxygen excess ratio or lO2 (Pukrushpan,
Stefanopoulou, & Peng, 2004a). This ratio must fulfil the
stoichiometric relation required to produce the current de-
manded, otherwise a phenomenon called oxygen starvation
occurs. This phenomenon implies a fast stack degradation and
low power generation, and the only way to finish it is by stopping
the reactants flow and the current demand (Bordons, Arce, & del
Real, 2006). Different studies are reported about this undesired
phenomenon, and in the literature controlling lO2 is proposed in
order to prevent it (Pukrushpan et al., 2004a; Thounthong &
Sethakul, 2007). Many control strategies have been proposed in
literature, ranging from feed-forward control (Pukrushpan, Stefa-
nopoulou, & Peng, 2004b; Pukrushpan, Stefanopoulou, Varigonda,
Eborn, & Haugstetter, 2006), LQR (Pukrushpan et al., 2004b;
Rodatz, Paganelli, & Guzella, 2003), neural networks (Almeida &
Simões, 2005) or model predictive control (MPC) (Bordons et al.,
2006; Gruber, Bordons, & Dorado, 2008), although they have not
been validated on real plants. In this paper the regulation of lO2
using MPC theory, manipulating the compressor to compensate
the reactants flow consumption generated by a power load profile
is proposed and tested on a real fuel cell.
The proposed control strategy incorporates the effect of the
load demanded to the fuel cell, which is the main disturbance,
therefore including implicitly a feed-forward effect. The controller
was designed using a model obtained from experimental data and
tested later on a real fuel cell.
The paper is organised as follows. Section 2 presents a
description of the fuel cell and the control problem. In Section 3

0967-0661/$ - see front matter & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.conengprac.2009.02.006
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J.K. Gruber et al. / Control Engineering Practice 17 (2009) 874–885 875

a detailed description of the controller design is given. In Section 4 computer (Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 at 2.67 GHz, 1 GB RAM) which is
the experimental results are shown and, finally, in Section 5 the not exclusively dedicated to real-time applications.
major conclusions are drawn.
2.2. System output and disturbance

2. System description The fuel cell system is used in a configuration with two
measurable outputs, the stack voltage V st and the air flow at
This section describes the used fuel cell, the system input, the cathode inlet W ca;in . Furthermore, the load current Iload is
output and disturbance as well as the control objective. considered as a measurable disturbance. The oxygen excess ratio
lO2 is a lumped variable and can be estimated from the system
2.1. The Nexa module output and the disturbance.
Generally, the oxygen excess ratio can be defined as the ratio
The work has been performed on a 1.2 kW Ballard PEM fuel cell between the oxygen W O2 ;ca;in entering the cathode and the oxygen
(Nexa Power Module Ballard, 2003, see Fig. 1), which can be W O2 ;reacted reacting in the fuel cell stack. The oxygen excess ratio
considered as a benchmark since it is widely used by many lO2 is considered as a performance variable of the system and its
research groups worldwide and it is representative of state-of- regulation is an important issue since this parameter determines
the-art PEM technology. The stack is composed of 46 cells with a the safety of the fuel cell.
110 cm2 membrane each. The system is auto-humidified and air- The oxygen excess ratio is defined as (Pukrushpan et al.,
cooled by a small fan. As for the hydrogen feeding of the fuel cell, a 2004b)
dead-end mode with flushes was adopted. The anode–cathode W O2 ;ca;in
pressure ratio is controlled to avoid membrane stress or damage, lO2 ¼ (1)
W O2 ;reacted
and therefore the hydrogen and oxygen mass flows are correlated.
In this project, an external controller that overrides the manu- with the oxygen mass flow rate as a function of the mass flow rate
facturer’s built-in controller has been developed and, in order of dry air W a;ca;in at the cathode inlet
to simulate a variable power demand, the energy produced was W O2 ;ca;in ¼ xO2 ;ca;in W a;ca;in (2)
delivered to an electronic load.
The fuel cell power module delivered by the manufacturer The oxygen mass fraction, xO2 ;ca;in , can be calculated by
includes its own on-board control system and software for yO2 ;ca;in MO2
measuring and collecting data of internal states over a serial xO2 ;ca;in ¼ (3)
yO2 ;ca;in M O2 þ ð1  yO2 ;ca;in ÞMN2
port. The mentioned software gives access to a wide range
of measurements, but with a relatively high sampling time where MO2 and M N2 denote the molar masses of oxygen and
of 200 ms. Furthermore, the measured data from Ballard’s nitrogen, respectively. For the oxygen mole fraction a value of
software package can be written in a file, but they cannot be yO2 ;ca;in ¼ 0:21 is assumed. The mass flow rate of dry air at the
accessed in real time for further purposes. cathode inlet is defined as
To permit immediate access to the measurements of the fuel 1
W a;ca;in ¼ W (4)
cell sensors a LabVIEW programme was developed to read the 1 þ oca;in ca;in
data from the serial port. This task was done earlier by Alejandro
with the humidity ratio
del Real and Alicia Arce from the Departamento de Ingenierı́a de
Sistemas y Automática of the University of Seville. To allow the Mv pv;ca;in
oca;in ¼ (5)
measurement of some variables with a smaller sampling time Ma;ca;in pa;ca;in
a National Instruments multifunction card (PCI 6229) was used.
being M v the molar mass of vapour. The molar mass of air at the
The analogue outputs of the card allow the application of signals
cathode inlet is calculated with
to the actuators of the fuel cell and, as a consequence, the
implementation of an external controller. Both Ballard’s software Ma;ca;in ¼ yO2 ;ca;in M O2 þ ð1  yO2 ;ca;in ÞMN2 (6)
package and the LabVIEW programme run on the same personal
The vapour pressure pv;ca;in and the dry air pressure pa;ca;in used to
calculate the humidity ratio oca;in are defined as

pv;ca;in ¼ fca;in psat ðT ca;in Þ (7)

Fig. 1. The Ballard Nexa fuel cell module in the laboratory.
pa;ca;in ¼ pca;in  pv;ca;in (8)
with fca;in denoting the relative humidity of air at the cathode
inlet. psat ðT ca;in Þ and pca;in represent the vapour saturation pressure
at a certain temperature and the pressure at the cathode inlet,
respectively.
The rate of oxygen consumption is proportional to the current
withdrawn from the fuel cell and can be written as (Larminie &
Dicks, 2003)
nIst
W O2 ;reacted ¼ M O2 (9)
4F
with n ¼ 46 the number of cells of the used fuel cell stack and F
the Faraday constant.
The fuel cell system based on (1)–(9) has 2 degrees of freedom.
One is the stack current Ist , considered as a disturbance of the
system. The second one is the input signal V cm (compressor motor
voltage), which will be presented in Section 2.4. The compressor

876 J.K. Gruber et al. / Control Engineering Practice 17 (2009) 874–885
motor voltage affects directly the pressure at the cathode inlet and
its effect is therefore taken in account in (8).
2.3. Control objective
As already mentioned in Section 2.2 the oxygen excess ratio lO2
has a fundamental influence on the safety of the fuel cell system.
In this way, Pukrushpan et al. (2004a) proposes to regulate lO2 ¼ 2
to guarantee safety and to provide high efficiency. In Arce,
Ramirez, del Real, and Bordons (2007) a variable profile for this
variable is proposed that gives the highest efficiency for each
value of the load. Deviations of lO2 from the reference implies
lower efficiency, and negative deviations increase the starvation
phenomenon probability.
The oxygen starvation phenomenon occurs when the oxygen
partial pressure falls below a critical level at any location at the
cathode (Pukrushpan et al., 2004a). Tests showed that the oxygen
starvation phenomenon can cause damages to the electro-catalyst
of the fuel cell, as well as reducing its performance (Thounthong &
Sethakul, 2007). To avoid this phenomenon, the oxygen excess
ratio lO2 always has to be greater than 1
lO2 41
Hence, one of the control objectives is the regulation of the oxygen
excess ratio to avoid oxygen starvation.
The second objective of the fuel cell control is the maximisa-
tion of the net output power. The net output power P net can be
defined generally as the difference between the power generated
by the fuel cell stack PFCS and the power Paux used by the
compressor, air fan and other auxiliary equipment. Hence, the net
power can be written as
P net ¼ P FCS  Paux
Fig. 2 shows the relation between the net power P net and the
oxygen excess ratio lO2 for different stack currents Ist and air flow
rates W ca;in . The figure was generated with a detailed simulation
model of the fuel cell based on first principles (del Real, Arce, &
Bordons, 2007). For the simulation an ambient air temperature
of T ca;in ¼ 298:15 K and a relative humidity of fca;in ¼ 1 were used.
The pressure at the cathode inlet pca;in and the membrane water
content (a variable which is not explicitly considered in this
article, but which has an effect on the net power of the fuel cell)
are calculated as described in del Real et al. (2007). For a constant
stack current and a low air flow rate the net power increases with
an increasing air flow rate. For higher flow rates a further increase
of the flow rates has a negligible effect on the net power. A more
or less constant net power is reached for all stack currents
when the value for the oxygen excess ratio is greater than 4.
120slpm
100slpm
80slpm
1200 60slpm
1000
Pnet [W]
800
600
400
200
10slpm
0
1 2
Fig. 2. Net power of the fuel cell model (del Real et al., 2007) in steady state for different values of the stack current Ist (dashed line) and air flow rate W ca;in (solid line).
ARTICLE IN PRESS
The setpoint for the oxygen excess ratio will be determined later
in experiments with the fuel cell.
2.4. Control input
The main goal of an external controller is the regulation of the
oxygen excess ratio lO2 . As seen in Fig. 2 and in (1), lO2 depends
basically on the stack current Ist and the air flow rate W ca;in at the
cathode inlet. Due to the fact that the stack current is a
disturbance, a manipulation of the air flow rate has to be used
to regulate the oxygen excess ratio.
As the used fuel cell is a closed system the compressor cannot
be controlled externally in its standard configuration. Hence, the
manufacturer’s built-in controller had to be overridden by using a
ML4425CS microcontroller connected to the compressor motor.
Therewith a new system input, the input voltage V cm , was created
allowing the manipulation of the compressor motor and, as a
consequence, the air flow rate at the cathode inlet. Note that in
the used configuration the compressor motor is still powered
internally, i.e. the air supply compressor load is drawn from the
fuel cell stack. Being a power-autonomous system the fuel cell is
subject to several limitations, e.g. the conflict controlling the
(10) oxygen excess ratio manipulating the air flow rate. For detailed
information on the possible conflicts see Suh and Stefanopoulou
(2006).
3. Control design for the oxygen excess ratio
Finally, with the defined control objectives and the new system
input the controller design was carried out. The idea was to
control the oxygen excess ratio lO2 manipulating the compressor
motor voltage V cm . As mentioned before, the measurements from
(11) the fuel cell sensors can be read only every 200 ms over the serial
port. With an estimation of the oxygen excess ratio lO2 using the
data over the serial port it is impossible to control a system with
fast dynamics as the fuel cell is (del Real et al., 2007). As the
estimation of the oxygen excess ratio lO2 (1) depends directly on
the air flow W ca;in and the stack current Ist , a higher signal rate of
these two measurements is necessary. To overcome this problem,
several experiments were carried out to identify the dynamics of
the mentioned variables.
3.1. Measurement of the air flow rate W ca;in
The air flow is measured with a sensor which was already
placed at the compressor inlet by the manufacturer of the fuel
cell system. In several experiments the sensor output V sensor
(a voltage) was measured with a sampling time of 10 ms by the
160slpm
140slpm
40A
35A
30A
25A
20A
15A
10A
5A
20slpm 30slpm 40slpm
3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
λO2 [−]

J.K. Gruber et al. / Control Engineering Practice 17 (2009) 874–885
data acquisition card. It was observed that, after applying a step in
the input voltage V cm , the sensor voltage V sensor reached steady
state within one sampling period. This means that the air flow
rate W ca;in reaches its steady state value in less than 10 ms. The
measurements of the air flow rate W ca;in provided over the serial
port were correlated with the sensor voltage V sensor measured
with the data acquisition card. With this configuration it was
possible to calculate the nonlinear map between the sensor
voltage and the corresponding air flow rate.
The sensor at the cathode inlet is a thermal sensor measuring
the air speed. As shown in Olin (1999), the air speed has to be
identified as a polynomial depending on the sensor voltage. This
means that the values of the air flow rate W ca;in supplied over
the serial port were used to calibrate the characteristic curve
of the sensor. Using a least squares algorithm the characteristic
curve was identified with a third degree polynomial
W ca;in ¼ c3 V 3sensor þ c2 V 2sensor þ c1 V sensor
Fig. 3 shows a comparison of the identified characteristic curve
and the measurements of the air flow rate provided over the serial
port.
3.2. Estimation of the oxygen excess ratio lO2
The oxygen excess ratio lO2 (1) is a lumped variable (see
Section 2.2) and cannot be measured directly and has to be
estimated through other measurements. The estimation of the
performance variable depends on the air flow rate W ca;in , the stack
current Ist , the pressure pca;in , the relative air humidity fca;in and
the temperature T ca;in . As was described in the previous section,
the air flow of the compressor can be measured directly. For the
stack current Ist measurements are available over the serial port,
but with a high sampling time (200 ms). Additionally, the values
of the stack current Ist are filtered numerically before being
100
80
Wca,in [slpm]
60
40
20
0
0 0.5
Fig. 3. Static nonlinearity between air flow rate W ca;in at the cathode inlet and measured sensor voltage V sensor with experimental data (dots) and the identified
characteristic curve (solid line).
2
Iaux [A]
0
0 0.5
Fig. 4. Parasitic losses Iaux due to the compressor, air fan and other auxiliary equipment of the fuel cell.
ARTICLE IN PRESS
877
available over the serial port. Due to these reasons the stack
current measurements are unusable for control purposes.
Installing a new sensor to measure the stack current Ist was
impossible due to the construction of the fuel cell system as a
closed system. For that reason an estimator of the stack current
was used. The current generated by the stack is used to feed the
load ðIload Þ and the auxiliary equipment of the fuel cell system
ðIaux Þ. Hence, the stack current can be defined as
Ist ¼ Iload þ Iaux (13)
Using the measured load current Iload the current Iaux has to be
estimated to calculate the stack current Ist . Several experiments
with the fuel cell were carried out to get information about the
behaviour of the current Iaux of the auxiliary equipment. Fig. 4
shows the parasitic losses Iaux for different values of the input
voltage V cm obtained from experiments. It can easily be seen from
the figure, that the relation between these two variables cannot
(12) be approximated by a second order polynomial with constant
parameters. Therefore, to estimate the current Iaux during
experiments, an adaptive algorithm was implemented. The
current Iaux has been defined as a quadratic function
Iaux ¼ c0 þ c1 V cm þ c2 V 2cm (14)
being V cm the input signal and c0 , c1 and c2 the adaptive
parameters. The estimation of the parameters is carried out on-
line using the Recursive Least Squares (RLS) method. The
influence of old data was reduced by using a forgetting factor
of g ¼ 0:99. The high value for the forgetting factor has been
chosen to avoid a too high sensitivity in the parameter estimation
which would result in an adaption to noise in the measurements.
As initial values for the parameters have been used c0 ¼ 0:2, c1 ¼
0:4 and c2 ¼ 0:07. With (14) and the measured load current, Iload ,
the stack current Ist can be calculated using (13). A comparison of
the estimated stack current, the measured stack current (over the
serial port) and the load current can be seen in Fig. 5. It can be
1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5
Vsensor [V]
1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5
Vcm [V]

878 J.K. Gruber et al. / Control Engineering Practice 17 (2009) 874–885
24
22
Ist, Iload, Ist, e [A]
20
18
16
14
12
10
7 9
Fig. 5. Comparison of stack current Ist (thin line), load current Iload (dashed line) and estimated stack current Ist;e (thick line) in transient and stationary sense.
observed that the estimated stack current has the same value as
the measured stack current in steady state. During transitions the
estimated stack current shows a similar behaviour as the load
current, but not the same value (see zoom in Fig. 5). The figure
shows that the parasitic losses, i.e. the difference between
estimated stack current and load current, are always greater than
zero.
Due to the design of the used fuel cell system it was impossible
to measure the cathode inlet pressure pca;in in the fuel cell. One
possibility to calculate the cathode inlet pressure is the use of
the equations given in the mathematical model of the fuel cell
(del Real et al., 2007). The cathode inlet pressure is based on
several ordinary differential equations, making the computation
of the cathode inlet pressure a computationally complex task with
respect to the fast dynamics of the system (see Section 3.1).
Therefore, a simplified model of the cathode inlet pressure was
developed. From simulation of the mathematical model (del Real
et al., 2007) it was known that the pressure pca;in depends mainly
on the air flow rate W ca;in at the cathode inlet, but also in some
part on the chemical reaction in the fuel cell stack and, as a
consequence, on the stack current Ist . With this knowledge the
following model of the cathode inlet pressure:
4 6
pca;in ¼ 1:0033 þ 2:1  10  W ca;in  475:7  10
was identified with simulation data.
Additionally two assumptions are made: the relative humidity
of the air at the cathode inlet has a value of fca;in ¼ 1 and the
temperature is the one of ambient air ðT ca;in ¼ 298:15 KÞ. Finally,
with the measurement of the air flow rate W ca;in and the described
simplifications, the oxygen excess ratio can be estimated as
pointed out in (1).
3.3. Identification of a prediction model
For the control structure a model predictive control has been
chosen due to the optimality of the calculated control signal.
The possibility to consider constraints in the computation of the
control action is another advantage of MPC. The physical model
described in (1)–(15) cannot be used as a control-oriented model
due to its complexity. Therefore, in order to use a model predictive
controller to regulate the oxygen excess ratio lO2 with the input
voltage V cm , a prediction model has to be developed. The
equations describing the physical model have been used to define
the general structure of a prediction model.
The equation to calculate the oxygen excess ratio lO2 (1) can be
expressed in short form as
W ca;in
lO2 ¼  f ðpca;in ; T ca;in ; fca;in ; n; F; yO2 ;ca;in ; M O2 ; M N2 ; Mv Þ
Ist
ARTICLE IN PRESS
22
20
18
16
14
12
8.4 8.42 8.44 8.46 8.48
11 13 15
t [s]
consisting of a division of the air flow rate W ca;in (12) at the
cathode inlet and the stack current Ist (13) and (14) and an
additional function containing the remaining variables and
parameters. The additional function f ðÞ depends on the pressure
pca;in , the temperature T ca;in , the relative humidity fca;in, the
number n of cells of the fuel cell stack, the Faraday constant F,
the oxygen mole fraction yO2 ;ca;in and the molar masses M O2 , MN2
and M v of oxygen, nitrogen and vapor, respectively. The pressure
at the cathode inlet can be calculated with (15) and the
temperature and the relative humidity are assumed to be constant
with T ca;in ¼ 298:15 K and fca;in ¼ 1. The Faraday constant has a
value of F ¼ 96485 C=mol and the used fuel cell stack possesses
n ¼ 46 cells. For the oxygen mole fraction and the molar masses
the values yO2 ;ca;in ¼ 0:21, M O2 ¼ 32 g=mol, M N2 ¼ 28 g=mol and
Mv ¼ 18:02 g=mol were used.
With the air flow rate, depending mainly on the applied input
voltage u ¼ V cm , and the stack current, considered as a distur-
bance w ¼ Ist , a simple model for the model output y ¼ lO2 can be
written as
y ¼ f ðu; wÞ (17)
To gather information about the behaviour of the fuel cell, several
experiments in open loop with changes in the stack current and
 Ist (15)
compressor motor voltage have been carried out. Fig. 6 shows
some experimental results which were used in the later model
identification. The stack current and the compressor motor
voltage were varied over their whole admissible intervals. Note
that even if stack current and compressor motor voltage were
used in a wide range, not all combinations of these two variables
are admissible, e.g. very low compressor motor voltage and high
stack current, in order to avoid starvation. This fact also prevented
the use of more sophisticated signals for the compressor motor
and the stack current like pseudo random binary sequences
(PRBS). It can be observed in the figure that with a raising stack
current the compressor motor voltage was increased for safety
reasons. During the experiments, the oxygen excess ratio was
normally in an interval of lO2 ¼ ½2:5; 10 which contains the area
of the maximum net power (see Section 2.3).
In the first step the knowledge of the physical model for the
oxygen excess ratio was used to find a suitable structure for a
prediction model. Based on (1)–(15) the following model was used
during the identification:
1 X1
yðkÞ ¼ y0 þ a uðk  iÞ (18)
wðk  1Þ i¼1 i
where the disturbance w ¼ Ist was considered to have an
immediate effect on the oxygen excess ratio without dynamics
(del Real et al., 2007). This instantaneous effect was considered in
(16)
the denominator of the prediction model and is based directly on
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J.K. Gruber et al. / Control Engineering Practice 17 (2009) 874–885 879

12
10

λO2 [−]
8
6
4
2
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600
t [s]
40
30
Ist [A]

20
10
0
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600
t [s]
4
3
Vcm [V]

2
1
0
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600
t [s]

Fig. 6. Experimental results of the fuel cell used for the model identification. Top: oxygen excess ratio lO2 , middle: stack current Ist , bottom: compressor motor voltage V cm .

7 5.5 7

6.5 6
5
6 5.5
6 4.5
λO2 [−]

λO2 [−]

λO2 [−]

λO2 [−]
5
5.5 4
5
4.5
5 3.5
4
4.5 3 4
627.6 628 628.4 628.8 1318.5 1319 1319.5 622 622.2 622.4 1396.6 1396.8 1397 1397.2
t [s] t [s] t [s] t [s]
14 25 11 13

13
Ist [A]

Ist [A]

Ist [A]

Ist [A]

12 20 10.5 12.5

11

10 15 10 12
627.6 628 628.4 628.8 1318.5 1319 1319.5 622 622.2 622.4 1396.6 1396.8 1397 1397.2
t [s] t [s] t [s] t [s]
2 2
2
1.9
1.95
1.8
Vcm [V]

Vcm [V]

Vcm [V]

Vcm [V]

1.8 1.9 1.5

1.6

1.85 1.4
1.7
1.8 11 1.2
627.6 628 628.4 628.8 1318.5 1319 1319.5 622 622.2 622.4 1396.6 1396.8 1397 1397.2
t [s] t [s] t [s] t [s]

Fig. 7. Results of the model identification in some operation points of the fuel cell with a comparison of the oxygen excess ratio lO2 and the output y of the identified model.
Top: oxygen excess ratio lO2 (solid line) and output of the identified model (19) (dash–dotted line), middle: stack current Ist , bottom: compressor motor voltage V cm .
 ARTICLE IN PRESS

880 J.K. Gruber et al. / Control Engineering Practice 17 (2009) 874–885

Using the step response model (19) the future output can be
6
predicted as
5
4 y^ ¼ Gu þ f (20)
αi [−]

3 where vector y^ is the output prediction, G is a matrix containing

2 the step response parameters of the identified model, u represents
the vector of future control increments and f contains the free
1
response and the identified offset y0 from (19). Note that the
0 parameters ai of the identified model (19) are scaled by the
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
disturbance w (stack current Ist ). This means that the matrix G has
i [−] to be recalculated in every sampling period and cannot be
Fig. 8. Identified model parameters ai . calculated off-line.
With the prediction model (20) the manipulated variable has
to be calculated to minimise the cost function
the oxygen consumption rate (9) and the oxygen excess ratio (1).
The input-to-output dynamics have been considered as an X
N NX
u 1

impulse response as the compressor motor voltage u ¼ V cm J¼ ðy^ ðt þ jjtÞ  yref ðt þ jÞÞ2 þ gðDuðt þ jÞÞ2 (21)
j¼1 j¼0
influences only indirectly the oxygen excess ratio y ¼ lO2 due to
its effect on the pressure at the cathode inlet pca;in . The offset y0 where N and Nu denote the prediction and control horizon.
represents a constant correction term for the output prediction. The parameter g represents the weighting factor1 for the control
As the used system is a stable fading memory system, it can be increments and yref contains the desired reference trajectory.
approximated by a finite impulse response model (Boyd & Chua,
1985). The identification was carried out with the least squares
3.4.1. Unconstrained minimisation
method using experimental data with a sampling time of
Without considering constraints in the control action and the
t s ¼ 10 ms. The finally identified model has the form
system output, the control action is calculated by minimising the
X12 cost function (21)
1
yðkÞ ¼ y0 þ a uðk  iÞ (19)
wðk  1Þ i¼1 i u ¼ arg min J (22)
u

which corresponds to an impulse response model with a The explicit solution for the minimisation is defined as (Camacho
truncation order of 12 whose coefficients are scaled by the stack & Bordons, 2004)
current Ist . Fig. 7 shows a comparison of the oxygen excess ratio
lO2 and the output of the identified model at different operation u ¼ ðGT G þ gIÞ1 GT ðyref  f Þ (23)
points. It can be seen from the figure that the oxygen excess ratio 3.4.2. Constrained minimisation
lO2 adopts instantaneously a new value after a change in the stack In the constrained case the future control action is computed
current Ist whereas a variation in the compressor motor voltage by solving the following minimisation problem:
V cm shows a dynamic adoption of a new value for the oxygen
excess ratio lO2 . The reaction to changes in the stack current Ist u ¼ arg min J
u
and the compressor motor voltage V cm justify the chosen model s:t: Lupc (24)
structure. The impulse response (see Fig. 8) with 12 elements nc Nu nc
signifies that the compressor motor voltage V cm influences the where L 2 R and c 2 R being nc the number of constraints.
oxygen excess ratio lO2 over an interval of 120 ms. The minimisation problem can now be solved using quadratic
The validity of the identified model has been verified with a programming (QP). In the first step the cost function (21) can be
second data set obtained in experiments. This set was generated reformulated in the following form (without considering the
in open loop operation varying the compressor motor voltage constant terms of the original cost function):
in an interval of V cm ¼ ½0:5; 2 V and the stack current in Ist ¼ J ¼ 12uT Hu þ bu (25)
½3; 32 A, resulting in an oxygen excess ratio of lO2 ¼ ½2:5; 10. Fig. 9
T T
presents the comparison between the measured oxygen excess with H ¼ ðG G þ gIÞ and b ¼ ðf  yref Þ G. Finally, with the matrix
ratio lO2 and the output y of the identified model (19) for some H and the vector b already defined, the control signal can be
operation points. Furthermore the mean square error (MSE) computed using QP.
between model output and measured value during identification The proposed model predictive control structure to regulate
and verification of the prediction model (19) for different the oxygen excess ratio can now be implemented on the fuel cell
operation points was calculated and can be seen in Table 1. The as shown in Fig. 10.
good fit of the model output in Fig. 9 and the calculated MSEs for
the verification justify the use of the identified model.
4. Experimental results

3.4. Model predictive control of lO2
With the identified model (19) a linear MPC with parameter
adaptation to stack current changes was developed. In order to
work with control increments instead of absolute values (19) was
transformed to a step response model. Based on the transformed
model a Dynamic Matrix Control (DMC) (Cutler & Ramaker, 1980)
to regulate the oxygen excess ratio lO2 can be designed. With the
DMC constraints in the control signal and the system output can
be considered.
In the first step, several experiments with the fuel cell in open
loop were carried out. During these experiments the stationary
behaviour was tested with different values for the motor
compressor voltage V cm and the load current Iload . The gathered
data was used to generate a stationary map correlating the net
power P net, the air flow rate W ca;in and the oxygen excess ratio lO2
1
In MPC literature the weighting factor for the control increments is normally
denoted l. To avoid confusion with the oxygen excess ratio, the weighting factor is
represented by g.
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J.K. Gruber et al. / Control Engineering Practice 17 (2009) 874–885 881

8 6.5
9
7
7 6
8

λO2 [−]

λO2 [−]

λO2 [−]
λO2 [−]

6 5.5
6
7
5
5
5 6
4
4.5
276.6 277 277.4 277.8 884.5 885 885.5 867.4 867.6 867.8 900.4 900.6 900.8
t [s] t [s] t [s] t [s]
8 12.5
9.5
7
12

Ist [A]
Ist [A]

Ist [A]
Ist [A]

12 9
10 5

4
8
3 11.5 8.5
276.6 277 277.4 277.8 884.5 885 885.5 867.4 867.6 867.8 900.4 900.6 900.8
t [s] t [s] t [s] t [s]

1.8 0.9
1.1 1

Vcm [V]
Vcm [V]
Vcm [V]

Vcm [V]

1.7 0.8 1
0.8
0.9
1.6 0.7
0.8 0.6
276.6 277 277.4 277.8 884.5 885 885.5 867.4 867.6 867.8 900.4 900.6 900.8
t [s] t [s] t [s] t [s]
Fig. 9. Results of the model verification in some operation points of the fuel cell with a comparison of the oxygen excess ratio lO2 and the output y of the identified model.
Top: oxygen excess ratio lO2 (solid line) and output of the identified model (19) (dash–dotted line), middle: stack current Ist , bottom: compressor motor voltage V cm .

Table 1 (see Fig. 11). The experimental results show that the obtained net
Mean square error between model output and measured value during identifica- power is almost constant for values lO2 44. Therefore, a value of
tion and verification of the prediction model (19) for different operation points.
lref
O2 ¼ 4 has been chosen for the setpoint of the oxygen excess
Oxygen excess ratio Identification Verification ratio. Note that the value for the reference can be changed
without affecting the proposed controller. It has to be mentioned
MSE, lO2 ¼ ½2:5; 3:5 0.0046 0.0055 that in many publications using a simulation model to show
MSE, lO2 ¼ ½3:5; 4:5 0.0105 0.0083 control strategies, e.g. Pukrushpan et al. (2004a) and Suh and
MSE, lO2 ¼ ½4:5; 5:5 0.0160 0.0146
Stefanopoulou (2005), the setpoint for the oxygen excess ratio is
MSE, lO2 ¼ ½5:5; 8:5 0.0286 0.0343
set to a value of 2. As in this article the proposed control strategy
ref
is applied to the physical fuel cell, the chosen setpoint lO2 ¼ 4
gives some additional security to avoid the starvation phenom-
enon. Fig. 11 also shows the stationary map of the fuel cell
simulation model. The comparison of the experimental results
Iload and the ones obtained with the simulation model (del Real et al.,
2007) shows in general a good fit, but presents a small offset in
the reached net power.
ref
λO2 Vst After determining a suitable reference for the oxygen excess
Fuel ratio, the MPC from Section 3.4 was implemented in LabVIEW in
λO2 Control Vcm λO2
cell the configuration shown in Fig. 10. The experiments showed that
Wca,in system Wca,in
system the unconstrained minimisation problem can be solved within the
sampling time of 10 ms. But it was observed that the built-in
supervisory system executes an emergency shutdown of the
fuel cell system in order to avoid oxygen starvation when the
compressor motor speed is reduced too fast. Therefore, constraints
Fig. 10. MPC control structure. in the increments of the control action were included in the
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
882 J.K. Gruber et al. / Control Engineering Practice 17 (2009) 874–885
120 slpm
100 slpm
80 slpm
1200
60 slpm
1000
800
Pnet [W]
600
400
200
10 slpm
0
0 1 2 3
Fig. 11. Stationary behaviour of the fuel cell. Comparison of model (del Real et al., 2007) for different stack currents Ist (dotted line) and air flow rates W ca;in (solid line) with
experimental data (dots).
minimisation problem in order to limit the maximum reduction of
the compressor voltage and, as a consequence, the compressor
motor speed. To solve the QP problem a built-in LabVIEW function
was used. Due to hardware limitations the MPC problem
considering these constraints could not be solved within the
proposed sampling time of 10 ms. Therefore, the sampling time
had to be changed to ts ¼ 20 ms and the parameters of the
impulse response were adjusted adequately.
The constrained MPC with a sampling time of t s ¼ 20 ms was
implemented and tested extensively. For the prediction and
control horizons values of N ¼ 7 and N u ¼ 7 were chosen,
respectively. The control increments were weighted with a factor
of g ¼ 8. The control signal and its increments are limited to
0:5 Vpuðt þ jjtÞp5:2 V; j ¼ 1; . . . ; N
 0:06 VpDuðt þ jjtÞ; j ¼ 0; . . . ; Nu  1
The system dynamics with respect to the stack current Ist
are much faster than the system reaction to changes in the
compressor motor voltage V cm (Pukrushpan et al., 2004b).
The different transient behaviours make it physically impossible
to avoid the characteristic peaks (Pukrushpan et al., 2004a;
Gruber et al., 2008) in the oxygen excess ratio after changes in the
stack current Ist with the proposed control strategy. Therefore,
constraints in the system output were not considered, only the
already shown limitations in the control signal and its increments
were used.
Fig. 12 presents some results of the fuel cell system controlled
by the proposed MPC with stepwise changes in the external load
Iload . It can be seen that the controller stabilises the oxygen excess
ratio around the desired value. After an increase in the load
current the error in the oxygen excess ratio is compensated
rapidly. The longer peaks after a reduction of the load current are
due to the restrictions in the control increments. The results show
that the applied MPC controls the system in a wide range for the
load current. Furthermore it can be observed in the results that
the stack voltage V st and the net output power P net reach steady
state shortly after the step in the load current was applied.
The results of Fig. 13 are based upon the same experiment
presented in Fig. 12. The figure shows in detail the trajectory of the
oxygen excess ratio after changes in the load current. In the results
it can be observed that the constrained MPC reacts very fast to
errors in the oxygen excess ratio. It compensates negative
deviations from the desired value resulting from a rising load
160 slpm
140 slpm
40A
35A
30A
25A 25A
23A
20A 20A
19A
15A 15A
10A
10A
5A
40 slpm
20 slpm 30 slpm
4 5 6 7 8 9 10
λO2 [−]
current in less than 100 ms. This fast reaction is important to
reduce the starvation phenomenon probability. In the case of
positive deviations the error compensation by the controller takes
a longer time, in the example shown in the figure the compensa-
tion requires approximately 500 ms. Although the controller
needs more time to compensate positive deviations, the peaks
do not harm the fuel cell as the oxygen excess ratio is bigger than
the desired value and, as a consequence, clearly above critical
values.
In order to perform a sensitivity analysis with respect to
varying ambient conditions, several tests with the proposed MPC
were carried out along 3 months. As a performance index the MSE
has been used. To allow a better comparison, the performance
index for the system in steady state and for the system during
transitions is given in Table 2 for three different experiments
(26) where the MPC was used to control the oxygen excess ratio to a
ref
value of lO2 ¼ 4. The calculation of the performance index for the
transient behaviour was carried out with the experimental data
reaching from 0.5 s before a step in the load until 1 s after applying
the step. It has to be mentioned that the measured air
temperature during the experiments varied between approxi-
mately 21.5 and 28:5 C. The MSEs indicate that the proposed MPC
performs well, in spite of having considered in the design phase
that the ambient conditions were fixed.
Finally, several experiments to compare the proposed MPC
with the fuel cell’s built-in controller were carried out. Measure-
ments showed that the original controller has a sampling time of
approximately 1 ms. Furthermore, it was observed that the built-
in controller does not control the oxygen excess ratio to a constant
value, but to a variable value depending on the load current. To be
able to compare results, the reference given to the MPC has to
correspond to the value used by the built-in controller. Therefore,
a reference generator for the MPC was developed from experi-
mental data generated with the built-in controller. The reference
generator calculates the desired value for the oxygen excess ratio
based on the measured value of the load current. Using a
predefined shape for the load current, experiments with the fuel
cell stack controlled by the original controller and by the MPC
were carried out. Fig. 14 shows some experimental results of the
fuel cell controlled by the original controller and the constrained
MPC. The maximum deviation of the oxygen excess ratio after a
load current change is the same for both controllers. It can be
observed that the proposed control strategy compensates devia-
tions after a rising load current, as in the previous results, in less
 ARTICLE IN PRESS

J.K. Gruber et al. / Control Engineering Practice 17 (2009) 874–885 883

8
6

λO2 [−]
4
2
0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
t [s]
Wca,in [slpm] 100

50

0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
t [s]
40
Vst [V]

35

30
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
t [s]
30
Iload [A]

20
10
0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
t [s]
Vcm [V]

3
2
1
0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
t [s]
1000
Pnet [W]

750
500
250
0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
t [s]

Fig. 12. Experimental results of fuel cell system controlled by the proposed MPC with stepwise changes in the load current.

8
6
λO2 [−]

4
2
0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
t [s]
5 5 6.5

4.5 4.5 6

4 4 5.5
λO2 [−]

λO2 [−]

λO2 [−]

3.5 3.5 5

3 3 4.5

2.5 2.5 4

2 2 3.5
2.7 3 3.3 3.6 26.5 27 27.5 35 35.5 36 36.5 37
t [s] t [s] t [s]

Fig. 13. Behaviour of the oxygen excess ratio after stepwise changes in the load current. Experimental results from the fuel cell controlled by the proposed MPC.

than 100 ms. The comparison of the air flow rate W ca;in at the (20 ms for the MPC, 1 ms for the built-in controller). The figure
cathode inlet shows that the proposed MPC reacts much faster also shows for both controllers the stack voltage V st . As this
than the built-in controller, in spite of the higher sampling time measurement is read over the serial port with a sampling time of
 ARTICLE IN PRESS

884 J.K. Gruber et al. / Control Engineering Practice 17 (2009) 874–885

200 ms the comparison of the cell voltage does not permit a clear stack current changes. The control strategy has been tested and
statement. In general it can be observed that the built-in validated on a commercial stand-alone fuel cell. For that purpose,
controller reacts much slower than the MPC and requires more the original built-in controller had to be overridden and the
time to compensate deviations in the oxygen excess ratio. In order constrained MPC was implemented externally.
to compare the performance of the two controllers the sum of The experimental results of the fuel cell system controlled by
square errors (SSE) is given in Table 3 for the entire experiment the constrained MPC showed that the proposed strategy compen-
shown in Fig. 14 and for some sections of this experiment sates negative deviations in the oxygen excess in a fast way. The
containing setpoint changes. The SSEs and the results from Fig. 14 error compensation in less than 100 ms reduces the starvation
indicate that the proposed MPC performs better than the built-in phenomenon probability and increases the safety of the fuel cell.
controller and that the compensation of errors in the oxygen In the comparison of the proposed strategy with the original
excess ratio is carried out faster. controller it was observed that the constrained MPC reacts much
faster and stabilises the oxygen excess ratio around the desired
value approximately five times faster. The computation times to
5. Conclusions

A model predictive controller for the oxygen excess ratio, using Table 3
the compressor motor to regulate the air flow rate, has been Sum of square errors for the experiment shown in Fig. 14 and for some sections of
setpoint changes.
developed. The designed linear MPC uses parameter adaptation to
Performance index MPC Built-in c.
Table 2
Mean square error for several experiments with the proposed MPC. SSE, t ¼ ½0; 60 s 49.98 87.98
SSE, t ¼ ½2:5; 4 s 4.77 13.76
Performance index Experiment 1 Experiment 2 Experiment 3 SSE, t ¼ ½26; 27:5 s 1.02 3.50
SSE, t ¼ ½42; 43:5 s 0.35 0.84
MSE (steady state) 1:091  102 1:574  102 1:123  102 SSE, t ¼ ½23:5; 25 s 8.55 16.46
MSE (transition) 1:388  101 1:356  101 2:073  101
Comparison of the proposed MPC and the original built-in controller.

30
Iload [A]

20

10

0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
t [s]
6 4
5 5
5
λO2 [−]

λO2 [−]

λO2 [−]

λO2 [−]

4 4 3
4
3 3
3 2
2.5 3 3.5 4 23.5 24 24.5 25 26 26.5 27 27.5 42 42.5 43 43.5
t [s] t [s] t [s] t [s]
60 60
50 65
Wca,in [slpm]

Wca,in [slpm]

Wca,in [slpm]

Wca,in [slpm]

40 50 50 60

30 55
40 40
2.5 3 3.5 4 23.5 24 24.5 25 26 26.5 27 27.5 42 42.5 43 43.5
t [s] t [s] t [s] t [s]
38 38 34
38
36 36 32
Vst [V]

Vst [V]

Vst [V]

Vst [V]

36 34 34
30
32 32
34 28
2.5 3 3.5 4 23.5 24 24.5 25 26 26.5 27 27.5 42 42.5 43 43.5
t [s] t [s] t [s] t [s]

Fig. 14. Comparison of the experimental results of the fuel cell system controlled by the MPC (solid line) and the original fuel cell controller (dashed line) with a variable
reference for the oxygen excess ratio (dotted line).
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
J.K. Gruber et al. / Control Engineering Practice 17 (2009) 874–885
calculate the control signal and the reliability of the proposed
control strategy could be improved using a dedicated real-time
controller.
Due to the fast dynamics the magnitude of the peaks of the
oxygen excess ratio after load current changes could not be
reduced. For the reduction of these peaks additional batteries
or ultracapacitors can be used. With the additional equipment
supplying current peaks, the transient behaviour could be
improved since the load requirements are smoothed.
Acknowledgements
Financial support by the Spanish Ministry of Education and
Science under Grant DPI2007-66718-C04-01 is gratefully appre-
ciated.
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