Model-Based Temperature Tracking Control in Automotive Fuel Cells

Effective thermal management is crucial for influencing both the durability and performance of fuel cell stacks for automotive applications. This paper aims to perform coolant inlet and outlet temperature tracking at various loads. This paper proposes a linear quadratic integral control to enable the stack inlet and outlet temperatures to track their target values in response to changes in fuel cell load currents. The step response of the high-fidelity fuel cell system model under each load current shows minimal to zero overshoots, with zero steady-state error. The simulation of the model under actual vehicle load demonstrates that the scheme exhibits good stability, rapid response, and robustness.