2012 IEEE International Symposium on Intelligent Control (ISIC)
Part of 2012 IEEE Multi-Conference on Systems and Control
October 3-5, 2012. Dubrovnik, Croatia
Fuel Flow Control of a PEM Fuel Cell with MPPT
Nabil Karami, Rachid Outbib
Laboratory of Sciences in Information and Systems (LSIS)
Aix-Marseille University, Marseille, France
nabil.karami@lsis.org, rachid.outbib@lsis.org
Abstract—In this paper, a Fuel Cell (FC) Maximum Power
Point Tracking (MPPT) with fuel flow optimization is
developed. The aim of this study is to extract the
maximum power from a FC at different fuel flow rates
and to protect the FC from over-current and voltage
collapses across terminals. The system is composed of a
tracker with a buck converter able to change the
impedance and therefore the FC power. In order to
illustrate our approach, simulation results show the
behavior of the tracker at different fuel flow rates and
verify the concept of maximum power tracking.
I. INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, FC's are considered as promising alternative
solution for electrical energy generations in the future for
mobile and stationary applications. This is due to their high
efficiency and environmental friendliness. As for other
industrial processes, optimizing the fuel consumption and
extracting the maximum power represent some technological
challenges in order to render FC a realistic solution for the
future.
The problem of extracting the maximum power in
renewable energy was first done for processes like
photovoltaic panels or wind turbines. The interest consists in
orienting the process in such a way that the produced power is
optimized [1-3]. There are several methods to search the
optimal value of a function [4, 5] where the Perturb and
Observe (P&O) is the most commonly used one based on its
simple algorithm. The problem of extracting the maximum
power from a FC has attracted the interest of authors [6-8]
and different methodologies have been proposed. More
precisely, the challenge is based on the tracking of the MPPT
of the FC by controlling the gases flow, the pressure or the
power converter.
In the functioning of FC, the output depends on many
operating parameters like cells temperature, anode and
cathode pressures, relative humidity, the stoichiometry and
the anode and/or cathode dry gas mole fraction. In fact, all
these parameters have an impact on the produced FC voltage
[9-12].
In the literature, many approaches are used to extract the
maximum power of a FC and are of two kinds.
The first kind is based on controlling the gases flow
and/or the pressure and various methodologies are used. For
instance, in [6, 13, 14] authors studied the MPPT of FC based
on the control of a motocompressor group. In [15], a dynamic
978-1-4673-4600-9/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE
Nazih Moubayed
Department of Electrical and Electronics, Faculty of
Engineering 1, Lebanese University, Tripoli, Lebanon
nmoubayed@ieee.org
feedback controller was designed to maintain a necessary
level of oxygen partial pressure in the cathode during
variation of current demand for FC system with air and fuel
supply subsystems. In [16-18], authors control the FC current
output by controlling the fuel feeding.
The second kind of approaches is based on the use of
power converter interface at the FC output to control the
output voltage and current. In this approach, power
electronics is playing the main role in extracting the MPP [19-
24].
Besides to these two kinds of approaches, a hybrid
methodology is developed in order to combine the advantages
of the two approaches [8, 25].
The goal of this study is to apply the MPPT on a static FC
model using the hybrid approach where a power converter
and a fuel flow rate controller accomplish the maximum
power tracking. In this study, we show that this approach
offers an optimization of the fuel consumption and allows
reaching the MPP at different fuel flow rates. Besides,
protection of the FC is taken into consideration by designing a
tracker that forbids the collapsing of the output voltage and
therefore the protection against short-circuit and over-current
absorption. In addition, the proposed control algorithm for
MPPT protects over the degradation of the mechanical
structure and the membrane by avoiding the overheating and
the water excess formation.
The paper is organized as follows. In the second section,
the components of system under considerations are described.
FC modeling is reviewed in the third section. In the fourth
section, the strategy for tracking is introduced. The fifth
section is dedicated to design the DC/DC converter and the
PWM signal generator. In the sixth section, simulation results
are presented in order to illustrate the performances of the
tracking strategy for MPPT. Conclusion is given in section
seven.
II. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION
The system consists of a static model of a Proton
Exchange Membrane FC (PEMFC) with typical voltage of
0.57 Volt per cell. The FC used in this paper is the one
predefined by SimPowerSystems toolbox of Matlab R2011a.
The MPP is achieved at 24.23 Volt, 52 A, 1.26 kW at
maximum fuel flow rate of 23.46 lpm. The system consists
also of a MPPT block followed by a PWM signal generator
that drives a buck converter. The system block diagram is
shown in Figure 1. Theoretically, for every fuel flow rate, the
FC generates a specific voltage and current. The role of the
289
tracker is to slide the current by acting on the buck converter reactions. The basic expression for the PEMFC voltage is [12,
so that the FC power reaches its maximum. The new current 26-28]:
value determines a new fuel flow that will manage on the next
cycle of the tracking process. VFC Ecell E act Econc Eohmic (4)

where VFC is the FC output voltage, Ecell represents the open

circuit voltage, whereas Eact, Econc and Eohmic are the
activation, the concentration, and the ohmic FC overvoltage
respectively.
In the ohmic region, the output voltage becomes linearly
dependent to the current density with a slope determined
mainly by the ionic resistance of the polymer electrolyte.
When the FC operates in the concentration polarization
region, depletion of reactants due to mass-transfer limitation
Figure 1: System block diagram causes the output voltage to decrease very rapidly to zero as
illustrated in Figure 2.
III. FUEL CELL MODELING
A FC is an electrochemical device that converts the
chemical energy of a fuel and an oxidant to direct electrical
current. In the case of hydrogen-oxygen FC, hydrogen (H2) is
the fuel and oxygen (O2) is the oxidant. The total fuel reaction
is:
H 2( g ) 1
2
O 2 ( g ) o H 2 O( l ) electricity (1)

A. Reversible voltage PEMFC model

The maximum amount of electrical energy generated in a Figure 2: Fuel cell polarization curves and losses types
FC corresponds to the Gibbs free energy ûG, [12, 18, 19]:
Wel 'G 'H T'S The overall nonlinear output voltage characteristic of a FC
(2)
can be described by the theoretical formula given by the
following Equation [29, 30]:
where G(joules) is the Gibbs free energy, H(joules) is the heat
RT § I FC · RT § I FC ·
content (enthalpy of formation), T(K) represents the absolute VFC Ecell ln¨ ¸ ln¨1 ¸¸ I FC Rint (5)
temperature, and S(Joules/K) is the entropy of the system. 2DF ¨© i0 ¸
¹ 2 F ¨© iL ¹
Assuming that all of the Gibbs free energy can be converted
into electrical energy, the maximum possible (theoretical)
efficiency of a FC is a ratio between the Gibbs free energy where IFC denotes the FC output current, i0 designs the
and hydrogen higher heating value, K =ûG/ûH = 83%. exchange current which can be considered as the current
Therefore, the theoretical voltage Eth of an electrochemical density at which the overvoltage begins to move from zero, iL
reaction of an H2/O2 PEMFC at standard conditions can be denotes the limiting current at which a reactant can be
calculated from: supplied to an electrode, . represents the charge transfer
coefficient and Rint is the internal FC resistance.
'H 0 T 'S 0
Eth ,T T0 1.2297Volt (3) C. Generic Fuel Cell Model
nF
Based on the study proposed in [31], a new approach of
FC static modeling is proposed, where the FC model is
where ûH0 = -286 kJ/mol, ûS0 = -0.1634kJ/K/mol, T = obtained from the manufacturer datasheet. The proposed
298.15K, F is the Faraday’s constant = 96.485 C/mol and n model represents a particular FC stack where the parameters
represents the electron pass round the external circuit for such as pressures, temperature, compositions and flow rates
every mol of supplied hydrogen. of fuel and air vary. These variations affect the Tafel slope
(A), the exchange current (i0) and the open circuit voltage
B. Steady State Model (Ecell). The parameters (Ecell, i0, A) have to be updated based
The internal voltage of an FC is a nonlinear function of on the input pressures, flow rates, stack temperature and gases
the FC current, internal temperature, and pressure of oxygen compositions. Ecell, i0 and A are modified as follows [10, 32]:
and hydrogen gasses. Like in batteries, FC output voltage is
the difference between its internal voltage and its internal Ecell K c En (6)
voltage drops, namely the activation, ohmic, and zFk ( PH 2 PO2 ) 'G
concentration voltage drops. These voltage drops are i0 e RT (7)
nonlinear functions of FC current, temperature, and chemical Rh

290
 RT between the FC and the load, can change the equivalent load
A (8) resistance seen by the FC.
zD F
A MPPT controller uses FC voltage, current and
subsequently its power to find the MPP and then generates
where R = 8.3145 J/(mol K), z is the number of moving control instructions to the power converter. The algorithm
electrons, En denotes the Nernst voltage (V), . represents the given in Figure 3 starts first by calculating the value of the
charge transfer coefficient. PH2 and PO2 (atm) stand for the power P at zero Ampere. Next, the current is slightly
inside stack partial pressure of hydrogen and oxygen increased and a new power value is calculated.
respectively, k denotes the Boltzmann's constant, h represents
the Planck's constant, ûG denotes the size of the activation
barrier, T is the temperature of operation (K) and Kc denotes
the voltage constant at nominal condition of operation.
The rates of conversion (utilizations) of hydrogen (UfH2 )
and oxygen (UfO2 ) are determined as follows:
60000.R.T .N . I FC
U fH 2 (9)
z.F .Pfuel .Vlpm ( fuel ) .x%
60000.R.T .N .I FC
U fO2 (10)
z.F .Pair .Vlpm ( air ) . y %

where Pfuel denotes the absolute supply pressure of fuel (atm),

Pair represents the absolute supply pressure of air (atm),
Vlpm(fuel) stands for the fuel flow rate (l/min), Vlpm(air) stands for
the air flow rate (l/min), x is the percentage of hydrogen in the
fuel (%), y is the percentage of oxygen in the oxidant (%), and
finally N designates the number of cells.
The partial pressures and the Nernst voltage are determined
as:
PH 2 (1 U fH 2 ) x% P fuel (11)
PO2 (1 U fO2 ) y % Pair (12)
44.43 RT
En 1.229 (T 298) ln( PH 2 PO2 1 / 2 ) (13)
zF zF

IV. MAXIMUM POWER POINT TRACKING TECHNIQUE

Figure 3: MPPT algorithm
When examining the typical FC polarization and power
curves illustrated in Figure 2, a point of maximum power is
observed. This point depends on the fuel flow that feeds the The MPPT Simulink block is shown in Figure 4. At every
FC. Therefore, there exist some conditions in which the FC cycle, input power and current are subtracted from the
produces the maximum power for the supplied fuel flow. previous power and current values respectively. The ratio of
power over current (ûPFC / ûIFC) is compared to zero in order
There are various methods to find extremum value of a to decide the direction of the next current perturbation.
function (which have been developed mostly for photovoltaic
arrays), such as Perturb and Observe (P&O) [4], Incremental
Conductance [5], short-circuit current method [33], and the
open-circuit voltage method [34]. Considering its simple
algorithm, P&O is the most commonly used method.
The P&O algorithm works by periodically perturbing IFC
and observing the resulting change on the output power ûPFC.
By comparing the direction of the perturbation to the
observed ûPFC, the direction of the next perturbation is
determined, and the process is repeated until ûPFC = 0
(ideally) is obtained. In practice, for P&O, IFC must be
constantly perturbed in order to keep the algorithm active,
Figure 4: MPPT Simulink block design
hence ûPFC = 0 cannot occur and the system will typically
oscillate around the MPP. A DC-DC power converter, placed

291
 V. DC/DC SYNCHRONOUS BUCK DESIGN 20 Amps. Notice that in Figure 8.a, the power curve will not
drops and the voltage will not collapse. The same scenario of
A. PWM duty cycle generation extracting the maximum power of the FC is repeated at a fuel
The PWM signal is generated by comparing a signal level flow of 23.46 lpm (Fig. 7.b and 8.b).
control with a repetitive saw-tooth waveform of 10 kHz (Fig.
5). The generator is designed to deliver two PWM signals in
opposite phase to control the synchronous buck converter.

Figure 5: PWM Signal generator

B. Model of synchronous buck DC–DC converter

The state-space averaged model describing the voltage
and current dynamics of the synchronous DC–DC buck
converter shown in Figure 6 are given by:
di L (t )
vout (t ) VFC (t )D (t ) L (14) Figure 7: Variation of voltage, current, power and duty cycle at
dt (a): 5 lpm, (b): 23.46 lpm
dv out (t ) v out (t )
C i L (t ) (15)
dt R

where L is the inductance, C denotes the capacitance, R

represents the loading resistance, VFC and vout are the input
and the output voltages respectively, iL denotes the inductor
current and . designates the duty cycle.

Figure 8: Power and voltage variation versus current at

(a): 5 lpm, (b): 23.46 lpm

Figure 6: Synchronous Buck converter
VI. SIMULATION RESULTS
A. Simulation with power tracker
By connecting the MPPT, the system is able to reach the
maximum power. Many simulations are done at different fuel
flow rates. From Figure 7.a, and Figure 8.a, the fuel flow rate
is fixed to 5 lpm. The maximum power reached is 500 Watt at
B. Simulation with power tracker at different fuel flow
rates
In this step, the tracker is simulated with a fuel flow rate
step variation from 5 to 20 lpm. As mentioned in the
subsection A, at 5 lpm the maximum power that can be
extracted from the FC is at 20 Amps. When an extra fuel is
added, the FC is able to deliver more power. Figure 9 shows
the power and voltage variations at different fuel flow rates
with no voltage collapsing.

292
 current sensors, the system is able to extract the maximum
MPP @ 20lpm
MPP @ 5lpm power at any fuel flow rates.

n
io
MPP @ 20lpm

ct
re

voltage
power

di
Trac
ng king
direc
ki
tion
ac
Tr

MPP @ 5lpm

current current

Figure 9: Power and voltage variation with fuel flow

C. Simulation with power tracker and fuel flow controller

Based on the generic model of [31], Equation (9) can be
modified and a relationship between the fuel flow rate and the
current is expressed as:
60000.R.T .N .I FC
Vlpm ( fuel ) (16)
z.F .Pfuel .U fH 2 .x%

Assuming a constant temperature and pressure, Equation
(16) shows a linear relationship between the current IFC and
the fuel flow Vlpm(fuel). At T = 55 degree Celsius and at Pfuel =
1.5 bars (optimum operating points), Equation (16) is
simplified to:
Vlpm( fuel ) 0.2346. I FC
Based on Equation (17), the simulation of Figure 10
shows that the tracker as far as the electrical output power
controls the flow.
Figure 11: Complete Simulink Design
VII. CONCLUSION
A maximum power point tracker and fuel controller are
studied and simulated in this study. The fuel cell is modeled
(17) in two different static representations. The P&O control
algorithm is applied using a buck converter. Results show a
good behavior of the controller with high efficiency.
Maximum power is extracted from the FC at different fuel
flow rates. One more important advantage of using the MPPT
is its ability to forbid the FC voltage to collapse and forbid
current to go beyond critical limits, which protect FC from
degradation and increase its lifetime.

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