Downgrade power allocation for multi-fuel cell system (MFCS) based on minimum hydrogen consumption

Abstract

At present, multi-fuel cell system (MFCS) is used to meet the high-power requirement, when a single stack fuel cell system is not sufficient. For the issue of non-optimal solutions in the low power range of multi-stack systems, the scheme of downgrade strategy power allocation for multi-stack systems is implemented by combining with Hydrogen consumption fitting curve and Lagrange function to solve condition constraint. The analytical solution of the scheme allows the power allocation of the n-dimensional system to be performed, which is expressed as an expression for the power allocation, hydrogen consumption, and the intersection of hydrogen consumption of the multi-stack system and the downgraded system. The solution meets the load power demand and better optimizes the low power output. The experimental results also verified the effectiveness of the optimized scheme by four 1kW proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) systems.

Keywords

• MFCS (Multi-fuel cell system)
• Hydrogen consumption
• Downgrade strategy
• Power allocation