2019 12th Asian Control Conference (ASCC)
Kitakyusyu International Conference Center
Japan, June 9-12, 2019
Thermal modeling and temperature control of an all-vanadium redox
flow battery*
HaiFeng Shen1 and XinJian Zhu2 and Hongfei Cao3 and Binqiang Xue4
Abstract— Previous studies have demonstrated that the elec-
trolyte temperature of an all-vanadium redox flow battery
(VRB) has a significant influence on the safety and efficiency of
the battery. Therefore, an effective cooling strategy is required,
especially for large-scale batteries. In this paper, a dynamic
thermal model of a VRB with heat exchangers is presented,
in which the internal losses, pump energy losses and reversible
entropic heat are taken into account. Based on this model, a
robust adaptive backstepping control scheme is proposed so that
the stack temperature can track the desired temperature in spite
of the presence of unknown parameters, external disturbance
and control saturation. To avoid the problem of the “explosion
of complexity” in the conventional backstepping method, a
dynamic surface control technique is introduced in this paper.
The anti-windup technique is used to compensate for the effect
of control saturation. Simulation results verify the effectiveness
of the proposed controller under varying operating conditions.
I. I NTRODUCTION
With growing demand for clean and renewable energy
sources such as wind and solar energy, energy storage
technologies will play a crucial role in the near future be-
cause of the capricious nature of most sources of renewable
energy. As a promising candidate, the all-vanadium redox
flow battery (VRB) has attracted considerable interest due
to its advantages of long cycle life, high energy conversion
efficiency, and fast response rate [1].
Unfortunately, some remaining significant technical chal-
lenges prevent VRBs from achieving widespread commer-
cialization [2]. One of the issues that need to be considered
is the thermal management of batteries. The stability of elec-
trolytes is affected by temperature. For typical electrolytes
with 2 M vanadium sulfate in 5 M sulfuric acid, precipitation
of V 5+ in the positive half-cell would occur when the
temperature is higher than 40◦C over extended periods [3].
Likewise, precipitation of V 2+ /V 3+ in the negative half-cell
would occur when the electrolyte temperature drops below
5◦C [4]. Precipitation could block the electrolyte channels
and deteriorate the performance of the battery. In addition,
high temperature is harmful to perfluorinated membranes,
and would accelerate the corrosion of the electrode plates [5].
*This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation
of China under Grant 61603205, and by the China Postdoctoral Science
Foundation under grant 2017M612205, and by the Qingdao Postdoctoral
Application Research Project under grant 2016022.
1 Department of Automation, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai
200240, China, hfshen999@163.com
2,3 Institute of Fuel Cell, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai
200240, China, xjzhu@sjtu.edu.cn
4 College of Automation, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266071, China,
xuebinqiang2005@163.com
978-4-88898-300-6 ©2019 JSME
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Therefore, the cell temperature should be controlled within
the safe range, which is generally between 5◦C and 40◦C.
The cell temperature not only is important for the safety
of the VRB, but also has a remarkable effect on the cycle
performance of the VRB [6], [7]. Up to now, no definite
conclusions have been drawn regarding the impact of the cell
temperature on the cycle performance. However, there is no
doubt that the cycle performance continuously vary with the
cell temperature. Hence, an optimal operating temperature
should exist within the safe range that optimizes the cycle
performance. The optimal operating temperature can be
obtained by experiment or simulation.
Although the cell temperature is a crucial factor for the
performance of a battery, only a few thermal models of
VRBs have been developed. Tang et al. [8] proposed a
dynamic model based on energy conservation to forecast
the electrolyte temperatures in the stack and tanks. The
pump energy losses were taken into account in the thermal
modeling by Xiong et al. [9]. Wei et al. [10] established
a thermal-hydraulic model to investigate the impact of the
stack flow patterns on the battery performance.
The above models are helpful for predicting the electrolyte
temperatures under various operating conditions, but the
forced cooling equipment is ignored in these models. Most
previous studies have shown that heat cannot be dissipated
rapidly by natural convection, especially in large-scale bat-
teries. As a result, in practical applications, the VRB systems
are mostly integrated with the forced cooling equipment. Wei
et al. [11] built a dynamic electro-thermal model for the VRB
with heat exchangers. However, the model was not suitable
for the accurate control of electrolyte temperature. To our
knowledge, there are no works yet on control strategies for
the stack temperature of VRB.
In this paper, a control-oriented thermal model of a
water-cooled VRB is developed based on energy and mass
conservation. Next, a robust adaptive controller is designed
for the VRB system so that the stack temperature can
track the optimal operating temperature accurately in spite
of the presence of unknown parameters, disturbances and
input saturation. Meanwhile, the temperatures of the other
components are restricted to the safe range.
II. DYNAMIC THERMAL MODEL WITH HEAT
EXCHANGERS
In this paper, the shell and tube heat exchangers are
assumed to be installed at the inlet of battery stack. The
schematic diagram of a VRB system with heat exchangers
432
 Load
flow resistance through the stack, which is eventually con-
Generator
verted to heat. The pump power can be calculated as:
AC/DC

e e Pp = R̃s Q2 (3)
Tw Tpi
Heat exchanger Heat exchanger
where R̃s is the flow resistance of stack. Considering the
complexity of the stack geometry, a numerical approach is
V3+
V4+

Tt Ts Negative adopted to determine the flow resistance. The last term is

Positive electrolyte
the reversible entropic heat absorption/generation rate during
V5+

electrolyte
V2+

tank
tank
stack charge/discharge which can be expressed as below:
Tpo dE
Pe = −N ITs
Pump Pump dT
2 (4)
" !#
N ITs CV O+ CV 2+ CH +
Θ
Fig. 1. A schematic diagram of an all-vanadium redox flow battery. =− ∆S + R ln 2

is shown in Fig. 1. Without loss of generality, the following
assumptions are made to simplify the model:
1) The temperatures in each component are uniformly
distributed;
2) The thermal behavior in each pipe, tank and heat ex-
changer are identical at both the positive and negative
sides;
3) The inlet cooling water temperature remains constant;
4) The volume of the electrolytes in the stack, tanks, pipes
and heat exchangers remain constant;
A. Thermal behavior in the stack
To investigate the variation in electrolyte temperature,
thermal model for the stack, tanks and pipes is developed
based on the conservation of energy. The energy equation in
terms of the stack temperature can be described as follows:
dTs
Cp ρVs =2QCp ρ (Tpi − Ts ) − Hs As (Ts − Ta )
dt (1)
+ Pr + Pp + Pe
where
Ts : stack temperature,
Tpi : the electrolyte temperature in the tubes of the heat
exchanger,
Ta : ambient temperature,
Q: volumetric flow rate of electrolyte.
The first term on the right side of the equation represents
the heat of electrolytes transferred from heat exchangers.
According to assumption (2), the heat of electrolytes trans-
ferred from heat exchanger at the positive side is identical
to that at the negative side. The second term represents the
natural convection heat dissipated to the surroundings. Hs
and As denote the overall heat transfer coefficient and area of
the stack. The third term represents the heat generation rate
caused by internal losses, such as activation, concentration
and ohmic losses. For simplicity, these internal losses are
combined together:
Pr = I 2 req
where req is the equivalent internal resistance, req = req,c
during charge and req = req,d during discharge. The fourth
term denotes the pump power consumed to overcome the
zF CV O2+ CV 3+
where
N : the number of cells,
∆S Θ : the molar reaction entropy at standard conditions,
I: the charge or discharge current, which is defined as
negative for charge and positive for discharge,
Ci : the vanadium concentrations in the stack.
The model of vanadium concentrations in the stack and
tank can be found in [12].
B. Thermal behavior in the heat exchangers
The graphite-modified polypropylene shell and tube heat
exchanger is used to remove the excess heat from the VRB
because it offers numerous advantages such as resistances to
corrosion and fouling, light weight and relatively high heat
convection coefficient. The thermal behavior in each pipe,
tank and heat exchanger at both the positive and negative
sides can be represented by an identical model. For the tubes
of heat exchanger, we have:
dTpi
Cp ρVpi =QCp ρ (Tt − Tpi ) − Hex Aex (Tpi − Tw )
dt (5)
+ Ppi
where Tt is the tank temperature. The second term on
the right side of the equation denotes the heat convection
between the tubes and the cooling water, where Tw is the
temperature of cooling water. The third term denotes the
pump power losses in the tubes. Ppi can be calculated as
[13]:
Ppi = ∆pQ (6)
For the cooling water in the shell of heat exchanger, we
have:
dTw
Mw Cw =Hex Aex (Tpi − Tw ) −
dt (7)
mw Cw (Tw − Tc ) − Hsh Ash (Tw − Ta )
The second term on the right side of the equation represents
the heat removed by the cooling water, where mw is the mass
flow rate of cooling water and Tc is the inlet temperature of
the cooling water.
(2) In general, the volumes of the inlet pipes before and after
the heat exchanger are normally quite small compared to the
volumes of the tank and the stack. Therefore, the energy
balance in these pipes are neglected in the thermal model.

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 C. Thermal behavior in the tanks and outlet pipes the coolant pump, i.e., the actuators saturation occurs, the
Ignoring the pressure drop in the tank, the model devel- stability of the control system might no longer be guaranteed.
oped for the tank temperature is obtained by, Therefore, the input saturation should not be ignored in the
dTt design and analysis of the controller.
Cp ρVt = QCp ρ (Tpo − Tt ) − Ht At (Tt − Ta ) (8) For this uncertain, mismatched nonlinear system in the
dt
where Tpo is the electrolyte temperature in the outlet pipe. strict feedback form, one possible control method is the
systematic backstepping approach [14]. However, conven-
dTpo tional backstepping need to calculate the virtual control
Cp ρVpo =QCp ρ (Ts − Tpo ) −
dt (9) derivatives, and the “explosion of complexity” may arise
Hpo Apo (Tpo − Ta ) + Ppo from repeated derivatives of the virtual control. A dynamic
The third term on the right side of the equation denotes the surface control (DSC) technique is applied to handle this
pump power losses in the outlet pipes and fittings which can problem by introducing a first-order filter at each step of the
be calculated similar to that in the tubes of heat exchanger. design procedure [15]. The compensation design is adopted
to address the input saturation.
III. T EMPERATURE CONTROL OF VRB
A. State-space model B. Robust adaptive controller design
Defining the state variables, the control input and the Assuming all the sate variables are measurable. The pro-
system output, respectively, as follows: cedure of the controller design is given as follows:
Step 1: Define the tracking error s1 = x1 − yr , where yr
   
x1 x2 x3 = Ts Tpi Tw , u = mw , y = Ts (10)
is the reference output, and the derivative of s1 is
The dynamic thermal model developed in the preceding
section can be expressed in state-space form as follows: ṡ1 = [−a11 + f (I, t)] x1 + a12 x2 + b1 θ1 (Ta − x1 )
(18)
ẋ1 = (−a11 + f (I, t)) x1 + a12 x2 + b1 θ1 (Ta − x1 ) + ∆1 + ∆1 − ẏr
ẋ2 = −a22 x2 + a23 x3 + ∆2 The virtual controller χ2 is designed as
(11)
ẋ3 = a32 x2 − a33 x3 + g (x3 ) u + b2 θ2 (Ta − x3 ) 1 h
χ2 = − (−a11 + f (I, t)) x1 + b1 θ̂1 (Ta − x1 )
y = x1 a12   (19)
where s1 D1 i
 2Q 2Q
 + D1 tanh − ẏr + k1 s1
V Vs 0 ε
 s Q Hex Aex Hex Aex 
[aij ]i,j=1,2,3 =  0 Vpi + Cp ρVpi Cp ρVpi  (12) where k1 and ε are positive constants to be designed. θ̂1
Hex Aex Hex Aex
0 Mw Cw Mw Cw indicates the estimate of θ1 ; the update law of θ̂1 will be
 h 1 i given later. Let χ2 pass through a first-order filter with time
b1 b2 = Cp ρVs Mw1Cw

(13) constant τ2 and get the estimate of it, i.e.,
τ2 ẋ2d + x2d = χ2 , x2d (0) = χ2 (0) (20)
   
Θ = θ1 θ2 = Hs As Hsh Ash (14)
 h 2
i Define the output error of this filter as y2 = x2d − χ2 ;
∆1 ∆2 = PpC+I req Ppi Q

p ρV s C p ρV pi
+ V pi
Tt (15) consequently, ẋ2d = − yτ22 . Define the estimate error of θ1
   2  as θ̃1 = θ1 − θ̂1 .
C +
V O2
C
V 2+ CH+
f (I, t) = C 1ρV − N I Θ
zF ∆S + R ln C C (16) Choose the Lyapunov function candidate as
p s V O 2+ V 3+
1 1 1
V1 = s21 + y22 + λ1 θ̃12 (21)
1 2 2 2
g (x3 ) = (x3 − Tc ) (17) The derivative of V is given as
Mw 1
It is difficult to measure the overall heat transfer coeffi- V̇1 =s1 [(−a11 + f (I, t)) x1 + a12 x2 + b1 θ1 (Ta − x1 )
cients and areas of the stack and pipes accurately. Therefore, 
y2

θi (i = 1, 2) are assumed to be unknown constant parame- +∆1 − ẏr ] + y2 − − χ̇2 − λ1 θ̃1ˆ˙θ1
τ2
ters, and the upper and lower bounds of θi are θi,max and (22)
θi,min , respectively. The flow resistance of stack and the head Define s2 = x2 − x2d , which yields
loss of pipes are difficult to identify and req varies with
x2 = s2 + y2 + χ2 (23)
temperature. They are regarded as unmeasured disturbances,
and the tank temperature is regarded as a measured distur- Substituting (19) and (23) into (22) and applying Lemma 1
bance. Therefore, ∆j (j = 1, 2) are regarded as unknown in Ref. [16], we get
disturbances and satisfy |∆j | ≤ Dj , where Dj are known V̇1 ≤ − k1 s21 + a12 s1 s2 + a12 s1 y2 + ke ε
constants that denote the bounds of ∆j . These uncertainties h
˙
i y2 (24)
would reduce the control accuracy and thus should be taken − θ̃ 1 λ θ̂
1 1 − s b
1 1 (Ta − x 1 ) − 2 − y2 χ̇2
τ2
into account during the control system design.
The update law for θ̂1 is designed as follows:
In practical application, the cooling water flow rate pro-   
vided by the coolant pump is limited. When the cooling water ˙ 1
θ̂1 = proj s1 b1 (Ta − x1 ) − 2λ1 γ θ̂1 (25)
flow rate demanded by the controller cannot be provided by λ1

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where λ1 and γ are positive constants to be designed. proj (·) ˙ 1 
θ̂2 = proj zb2 (Ta − x3 ) − 2λ2 γ θ̂2 (38)
is the projection function, the definition of proj (·) can be λ2
found in [16]. The projection mapping guarantees θ1,min ≤ The nominal control signal ud is filtered to produce the
θ̂1 ≤ θ1,max and magnitude and rate limited control signal u that satisfies the
  h i limitations imposed on the control signal. This command
1 filter can be chosen as [17]
θ̃1 λ1 proj s1 b1 (Ta − x1 ) − 2λ1 γ θ̂1
λ1  " #
  2 q2

i q̇1 (t)
=
h  
ω
− s1 b1 (Ta − x1 ) − 2λ1 γ θ̂1 ≥ 0 (26) q̇2 (t) 2ζωn SR 2ζωnn [SA (ud ) − q1 ] − q2
(26) yields (39)
h i    
−θ̃1 λ1ˆ˙θ1 − s1 b1 (Ta − x1 ) ≤ −γλ1 θ̃12 + γλ1 θ12 u q
(27) = 1 (40)
u̇ q2
The derivative of χ2 can be written as follows:
where SA (.) and SR (.) represent the magnitude and the rate
∂χ2 ∂χ2 ∂χ2 ˙ ∂χ2 ˙
χ̇2 = ẋ1 + ṡ1 + I+ θ̂1 − ÿr limitation functions, respectively. The functions SA (.) and
∂x1 ∂s1 ∂I ∂ θ̂ 1 (28)
  SR (.) are saturation functions defined as:
= B2 s1 , s2 , θ̂, yr , ẏr , ÿr , I

um
 v ≥ um
where B2 (·) is a continuous function. If V1 is bounded, then SA (v) = v 0 < v < um (41)
B2 (·) has a maximum value M2 [15].

0 v≤0

M2
Choosing k1 = γ + a12 , τ12 = γ + 12 a12 + 4ε2 , we get 
Rm
 v ≥ Rm
1
V̇1 ≤ −2γV1 + a12 s22 + (ke + 1) ε + γλ1 θ12 (29) SR (v) = v |v| < Rm (42)
2 
Step 2: The dynamics of s2 can be obtained as −Rm v ≤ −Rm


ṡ2 = −a22 x2 + a23 x3 + ∆2 − ẋ2d (30) where um is the maximum cooling water flow rate and Rm
The virtual controller χ3 is designed as is the maximum cooling water flow change rate.
 
1 h s2 D2 C. Stability Analysis
χ3 = − − a22 x2 + D2 tanh − ẋ2d
a23 ε (31) To analyze the stability and convergence of the closed-
i
+ k2 s2 + a23 α loop system, we now consider a Lyapunov function given
by
where k2 > 0 is a design parameter and α is an auxiliary
1 1
signal which will be defined later. Introduced a first-order V = V2 + z 2 + λ2 θ̃22 (43)
2 2
filter to get the estimate of χ3 Invoking eqs. (34) to (38), the time derivative of V is
τ3 ẋ3d + x3d = χ3 , x3d (0) = χ3 (0) (32) V̇ ≤ −2γV + M (44)
Define y3 = x3d − χ3 and s3 = x3 − x3d . Consider the 2 2
where M = (2ke + 3) ε + λ1 θ1,max + λ2 θ2,max . Integrating
Lyapunov function candidate V2 as both sides of (44) yields
1 1
V2 = V1 + s22 + y32
 
(33) M M
2 2 V (t) ≤ + V (0) − e−2γt (45)
Similar to step 1, the derivative of V2 is derived as 2γ 2γ
1 2
Thereby,
V̇2 ≤ −2γV2 + a23 (s3 − α) + 2 (ke + 1) ε + γλ1 θ12 s
2 p M
(34) lim |s1 (t)| ≤ lim 2V (t) ≤ (46)
t→∞ t→∞ γ
Step 3: Define θ̃2 = θ2 − θ̂2 and ∆u = u − ud , where u and
(45), (46) indicate that the state variables are globally
ud are the applied and nominal control signal, respectively.
uniformly ultimately bounded, and the tracking error will
The derivative of s3 is
converge to an arbitrary small neighbourhood of the origin
ṡ3 =a32 x2 − a33 x3 + g (x3 ) u + b2 θ2 (Ta − x3 ) if the design parameters are appropriately chosen.
(35)
− ẋ3d
IV. S IMULATION AND RESULTS
Let z = s3 − α denote the compensating error signal, where
α is a compensating signal that is used to eliminate the effect A. Parameters and operating conditions
of ∆u. α is defined as To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed con-
α̇ = −k3 α − g (x3 ) ∆u, α (0) = 0 (36) troller, a 20 kW/40 kWh VRB is simulated in the Mat-
Choose the nominal control law ud and the update law for lab/Simulink environment. Its main characteristics are listed
θ̂2 as in Table I.
1 h The electrolyte temperature is influenced by many operat-
ud = a32 x2 − a33 x3 + b2 θ̂2 (Ta − x3 ) − ẋ3d ing conditions such as ambient temperature, charge/dicharge
g (x3 ) (37)
i current, electrolyte flow rate, cooling water flow rate and
+ k3 s3 its inlet temperature. In this paper, a sine curve is used to

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 TABLE I 7
T HE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE VRB STACK . 6

5
Parameter Value

Error/ °C
4

N 152 3
Cs 2 mol L−1 2
S 1500 cm2
- 121.7 J mol−1 K−1
1
∆SrΘ
Rcharge 0.163 Ω 0
0 5000 10000 15000
Rdischarge 0.260 Ω Time/s

Cp 3200 J kg−1 K−1 Fig. 2. Tracking error.

ρ 1354 kg m−3
Vs 136.8 L
32
Vpi 30.0 L Ts
T
Vt 750 L Tt
pi
30
Vpo 3.1 L Tpo

Temperature/ °C
R̃s 9.30 × 106 Pa s m−3 28
Tw

Hs As 14.98 W K−1
Hex Aex 3623 W K−1 26

Hsh Ash 11.94 W K−1

47.56 W K−1
24
Ht At
Hpo Apo 1.43 W K−1 22
0 5000 10000 15000
Mw 347.3 kg Time/s
Cw 4200 J kg−1 K−1
Fig. 3. Temperatures of the system components.

simulate a typical daily ambient temperature in the summer

Temperature/ °C

31
which varies from 28◦C to 35◦C. In normal condition, 29
the charge and discharge current is set as 90 A, and the 27

flow rate is set as 3.5 L s−1 base on Faraday’s Law of 25

Electrolysis . The initial temperature of the VRB system is 0 4 8 12 16 20 24

Time/h
set as 31.5◦C corresponding to the ambient temperature at
Flow rate/L/s-1

8:00. The objective stack temperature is 25◦C and the inlet 0.6

temperature of cooling water is set 5◦C lower, i.e., 20◦C. 0.4

The control gains for the robust adaptive controller are
selected as k1 = 0.09, k2 = 0.06 and k3 = 0.05. The
update law gains are selected as λ1 = 0.0017, and λ2 =
0.0077. These gains are selected after numerous simulation
experiments to achieve a good balance between tracking
performance and robustness. The upper and the lower bounds
of the vector Θ are supposed
 to be Θ max = 17 15
and Θmin = 12 10 , respectively. The first-order filter
parameters used for dynamic surface design are τ2 = τ3 =
0.01. The filter parameters used in real control input are
ζ = 0.7, ωn = 20. The limitations on actuator are supposed
to be um =0.6 Kg s−1 and Rm =0.06 Kg s−2 .
B. Control results
Figs. 2-3 illustrate the simulation results in the first cycle.
As shown in Fig. 2, during the initial transient phase, because
of a large amount of heat accumulated in the electrolytes,
the control input suffer saturation and the cooling system
cannot provide an adequate cooling water flow rate, which
results in certain tracking errors. Nonetheless, after this
period of time, the control saturation is no longer active,
and the stack temperature tracks the objective temperature
within a very small neighborhood of zero. The temperatures
of the electrolyte in different system components and the
cooling water are presented in Fig. 3. It can be seen that
the temperature distribute uniformly in system components
except the tubes of the heat exchanger, because the relatively
high flow rate transfers heat out of the stack effectively.
0.2
0
0 4 8 12 16 20 24
Time/h
Fig. 4. Stack temperature and corresponding cooling water flow rate under
varying ambient temperature.
Fig. 4 shows the variation in the stack temperature and the
corresponding cooling water flow rate in 24 hours. This result
reveals that the stack temperature can be maintained at the
objective temperature under varying ambient temperatures.
The temperature decrease during the initial phase of charge
process is attributed to the fact that the reversible entropic
heat absorption exceeds the sum of heat generation in the
stack and tranfer from other components. The temperature
decrease results in the cooling water flow rate of 0 Kg s−1 ,
i.e., the cooling system is shut down during the initial phase
of charge process.
C. Comparison with PID control
To evaluate the performance of the proposed controller,
a conventional PID controller with anti-windup is also im-
plemented for the VRB system. For a fair comparison,
the PID controller gains are fine tuned to yield optimal
performance. Our best choice of PID controller gains are
Kp = 0.37, Ki = 0.0055 and Kd = 0.001. The comparison
of the simulation results of the proposed controller and PID
controller in the first two cycles is shown in Fig. 5 and Fig.

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 31
Temperature/°C
29
27
25
0 0.5 1 1.5
Time/s
Fig. 5. Temperature responses of the proposed controller and PID
controller.
0.6
0.6
0.3
0
Flow rate/L/s-1
9030 9040
0.4
0.2
0
0 0.5 1 1.5
Time/s
Fig. 6. Cooling water flow rate comparison of the proposed controller and
PID controller.
6. As shown in Fig. 6, during the initial transient phase, the
cooling water flow rate of proposed controller escapes from
the saturated region earlier than the PID controller. As a
result, the proposed controller have no undershoot, while the
PID controller produces large undershoot, which can be seen
in Fig. 5. At 9034th second, the battery switchs from charge
process to discharge process, and the reversible entropic heat
switchs from negative to positive, lead to remarkable change
of the heat generation rate. Thus, during the initial period
of discharge process, the cooling water flow rate of both
controllers changes greatly, and the flow rate of proposed
controller is higher than that of PID controller. However, it
makes the system response quickly and shorten the settling
time. As seen in the zoom-in in Fig. 6, the cooling water
flow rate of proposed controller increases from the minimum
to maximum values in 10 s, because the command filter
limit the rate of actuator. It is observed that both controllers
keep the steady state error less than 0.1 in the absence of
disturbances, the PID controller performs even better than
proposed controller.
We now check the stack temperature dynamic performance
in terms of the change of current and flowrate. Assume the
load current steps from 90 A to 120 A at the 30000th second
which is caused by load disturbance, and the electrolyte
flow rate step accordingly from 3.5 L s−1 to 4.7 L s−1 .
Thus the reversible entropic heat, internal losses and pump
power losses are all jump. As shown in Fig. 5, the proposed
controller has less overshoot and converges faster in the
presence of disturbance.
V. C ONCLUSION
Model-based adaptive backstepping control has been in-
vestigated for the uncertain nonlinear systems with input con-
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Objective temperature
PID controller
straints in this paper. A dynamic surface control technique
Proposed controller
was used to facilitate the computation of the derivative of
virtual control. Additionally, considering the input saturation,
the anti-windup technique was introduced. It was proven
that the tracking error converged to an arbitrarily small
neighborhood of origin. A 20 kW/40 kWh VRB system
controlled by the proposed control scheme was simulated.
2 2.5 3 3.5
×104 The simulation results indicate that the proposed controller
has a improvement in terms of overshoot settling time
and robustness, and the stack temperature can track the
desired temperature accurately. Meanwhile, the electrolyte
PID controller
temperatures in other components are within the safe range
Proposed controller
to avoid possible precipitation of vanadium ions. This control
scheme is helpful to improve the efficiency of VRBs.
9050
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