This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier.

The attached copy is furnished to the author for internal non-commercial research and education use, including for instruction at the authors institution and sharing with colleagues. Other uses, including reproduction and distribution, or selling or licensing copies, or posting to personal, institutional or third party websites are prohibited. In most cases authors are permitted to post their version of the article (e.g. in Word or Tex form) to their personal website or institutional repository. Authors requiring further information regarding Elseviers archiving and manuscript policies are encouraged to visit: http://www.elsevier.com/copyright

Author's personal copy

i n t e r n a t i o n a l j o u r n a l o f h y d r o g e n e n e r g y 3 7 ( 2 0 1 2 ) 1 3 1 4 1 e1 3 1 4 6

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

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

A new control strategy for hybrid fuel cell-battery power systems with improved efciency
Chung-Hsing Chao*, Jenn-Jong Shieh
Department of Electrical Engineering, Ta-Hwa Institute of Technology, Hsinchu, 30743, Taiwan, ROC

article info
Article history: Received 17 December 2011 Received in revised form 12 March 2012 Accepted 27 March 2012 Available online 24 April 2012 Keywords: Hybrid power systems Battery PEM fuel cell Electric scooter

abstract
In this paper, a new hybrid fuel cell-battery power system with a single DCeDC boost converter is proposed to supply a simple, low cost, and highly stable load-sharing characteristic, which the fuel cell is acted as a main power source and the battery as an energy balancer except for supplying the fuel cell stacks auxiliary power and modulating the excessive or insufcient power for the load. The proposed control strategy for hybrid power sources system shows that with a decrease in battery size the hybrid fuel cell-battery will reduce the duration of power-sharing from batteries-dominated to fuel cells-dominated. As a result, not only the efciency of fuel cell (FC) can be dramatically increased in partial load conditions, but also full recharging of battery in the proposed hybrid power system is more efcient when the load is less on-demand with a better overall efciency. Finally, some experimental results are presented for verifying the effectiveness of the proposed hybrid FC-battery power system. Copyright 2012, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1.

Introduction

In the last few decades, many efforts have been made to further in the development of low temperature fuel cells like PEMFCs [1]. Recently, these fuel cells have become available and, due to mass production, costs have become more reasonable. As long as fuel remains adequate supply, additionally, fuel cells power can be varied with its output power. On the other hand, the battery is well known an energystorage device that needs to be charged and discharged from other sources. Increasing its power output, in a very short period of time, the battery will exhaust its energy and must be recharged before it can continue to use. Fig. 1 shows the Ragone chart of variable energy-storage elements conceptually. In the gure, the vertical axis describes how much energy is available, while the horizontal axis shows how quickly that energy can be delivered per unit mass [2]. For example,

a load-powering a small light-bulb and a high-speed electronic devices are two represented loads at opposite corners (see Fig. 1). The load-powering a small light-bulb may require low amounts of power, but the power should be delivered slowly enough to operate a ashlight for minutes or hours of use. Conversely, the high-speed electronic devices inside a computer may require very little energy to activate; yet it must be delivered rapidly enough to complete the transaction in mere microseconds. As the above reasons, obviously, the PEMFCs have advantages in comparison with batteries, but also some disadvantages, including lower efciency in case of very low power levels, start-up delays, relatively high costs and short product life. Conversely, batteries have other merits in comparison with fuel cells as well, including high power densities, simple structure, and low cost. The simplest hybrid power system by connecting both the fuel cell and the battery directly to power [3]. This passive hybrid

* Corresponding author. Tel.: 886 3 5927700x2551; fax: 886 3 5924656. E-mail address: davidee@thit.edu.tw (C.-H. Chao). 0360-3199/$ e see front matter Copyright 2012, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ijhydene.2012.03.143

Author's personal copy

13142
i n t e r n a t i o n a l j o u r n a l o f h y d r o g e n e n e r g y 3 7 ( 2 0 1 2 ) 1 3 1 4 1 e1 3 1 4 6

V V0 Vact Vres Vcon

(1)

where V0 is the open-circuit voltage, Vact the activation loss, Vres the resistance loss and Vcon is the concentration loss. The fuel cell stack consists of n cells with connected in series. Therefore, the fuel cell stack voltage is given by Vstack nV (2)

The open-circuit voltage of the Nernst equation for the PEMFC can be illustrated using the values for the standard state entropy change [13]. V0 Dg0 f 2F # " 1=2 aH2 aO2 RT ln aH2 O 2F (3)

Fig. 1 e Energy density vs. power density for various energy-storing devices.

has a number of disadvantages. First, because the power is passively distributed between the fuel cell and the battery, depending on the characteristics of each component, the maximum output current of the hybrid sources might be limited by the current capacity of the fuel cell. Second, it is necessary to match the nominal voltage of the fuel cell stack to that of the battery, which eliminates much exibility in the system design. The active hybrid power systems based on the DCeDC power converters placed on the output of the fuel cell [1] and battery have been operated to power to the load, depending on the weighting between the power of the fuel cell and the capacity of the battery that basically differ in energy and power parameters from the fuel cell [4e12] and to extend fuel cells lifetime [9]. As a result, Although variable DCeDC converters utilized in the above-mentioned studies to increase better efciency [4,5,7e12] and/or reduce the number of elements of the converter design [4,6], the most common structure for hybrid power systems is composed of multiple DCeDC converters. In this paper, a new hybrid fuel cell-battery power system with a single DCeDC boost converter is proposed to overcome the above-mentioned problems. Contents of the following sections are outlined as follows. Brief review for the electrical characteristic of PEMFC will be given in Section 2. In Section 3, the system structure and control strategy of the proposed hybrid power sources is described. A prototype hardware circuit is constructed and experimental results and discussion are presented for illustration in Section 4. Some conclusions are offered in Section 5.

where Dg0 is the change in molar concentration of the f hydrogen, as per Gibbs free energy of formation principle, at standard temperature (273.15 K), pressure (1 bar) and F is the Faraday constant (96,485 C mol1). In this formula, T is the cell temperature (K), R is the gas constant (8.314 Jmol1 K1), ai is the activity of species i at the catalystegas interface, and the ratio of gas to liquid water is aH2 O 1. In order to validate the experimental data, a theoretical calculation with the minimum parameters set that has to be known is given by [13]   i iL ri (4) V V0 Aln i0 These losses with the combined effect of the thermodynamics, the activation loss, the resistance loss, and the concentration loss determine the output voltage of a cell. The theoretical curve-tting is determined by the following data, such as V0 1.2 V, A 0.06 V, i0 0.04 mA cm2, and r 0.003 U cm2. The open-circuit voltage, V0 1.2 V, is calculated for the reversible cell voltage at 52  C (325 K) by Eqn. (3). The activation overvoltage constant, A, is given by the MEA supplier, which is predominated at low current densities. The internal current iL due to fuel leak or crossover is tested to be 3.8 mA cm2, and the exchange current density i0 of 0.04 mA cm2 are also given by the MEA supplier. The resistance, r, is mainly determined by a membrane electrode assembly (MEA) under the fully-humidied assumption, which is predominant in the intermediate current density region. The fuel cell stack, as listed in Table 1, consists of 16 cells (n 16) connected in series. Fig. 3 shows the experimental and theoretical results of fuel cell polarization curves, in which the cell temperature 52  C, cathode RH % of O2 100, and fuel/oxygen stoichiometric ratio is H2 1.5 and Air 2.5. It is seen from Fig. 3 that the theoretical model correlated with experimental data within a 5% percentage error. Here, the percentage error ER(%) is dened as follows. ER% experimental value theoretical value % experimental value (5)

2. A brief review of electrical characteristic of PEMFC

A PEMFC consists of three major components: an anode electrode, a solid polymer electrolyte and a cathode electrode. In a PEMFC, hydrogen fuel gas is fed continuously to the anode and an oxidant (from air) is fed continuously to the cathode compartment. The electrochemical reactions take place at the electrodes to produce an electric current. The theoretical model for electrochemical reactions has been used to model PEMFC behavior as follows [13],

3. System structure and control strategy of the proposed hybrid power sources
The structure of the proposed hybrid fuel cell-battery power system is implemented in the open environment as shown in

Author's personal copy

i n t e r n a t i o n a l j o u r n a l o f h y d r o g e n e n e r g y 3 7 ( 2 0 1 2 ) 1 3 1 4 1 e1 3 1 4 6

13143

Table 1 e Properties of the 500 W PEM fuel cell stack. Item

Performance

Details
Rated net output DC current DC voltage Operating lifetime Stack output Cell number Active area Composition Supply pressure

Specications
500 W 20 w 41 A 11.45 w 14.57 V 1500 h 750W@0.65 V/cell 16 185 cm2 99.99% dry gaseous hydrogen 10 to 74 psig (before Regulator) <11.5 SLPM 3e40  C 0%e95% <40 dBA @ 1 m Range 0 w 10 bar Power consumption <7 W Stack

Stack

Fuel

Consumption Operating Ambient environment temperature Relative humidity Noise Noise MBOP H2 pressure switch Anode solenoid valve Temperature sensor Humidier Air pump

Fig. 3 e Fuel cell polarization curves between the experimental and theoretical results.

EBOP

Cathode side, Gas to Gas Flow rate 30 L/min @ 30 kPa, 23.5 0.5 VDC Cooling water Max. stack 85  C 400 L/hr, variable system ow/pressure controlled by DC signal H2 Leakage H2 sensor DC/DC converter Input voltage 11w22 V Power output 556 W @ 12 V Max input current 50 A Efciency 92.7% @ input 12 V Lead-acid battery 24 V/7.2 Ah Lithium-ion battery 24 V/20 Ah

feeds a set output voltage of PEMFC. A controller is implemented to deal with the power ows of the proposed hybrid fuel cell-battery power systems for vary operation modes by switches Q11 and Q12.

3.1.

System-start-up-mode

When the system starts, a battery is needed to help system starts and unceasingly supply to the fuel cell stacks auxiliary power (blower, compressor, humidier, control units and DCeDC boost converter etc.) because of fuel cells slow startup characteristic. While fuel cell can work stably, the DCeDC boost converter will be operated to switch on the fuel cell to power to the system, which will take care of the whole system.

3.2.
Fig. 2, combining a PEMFC with sufcient batteries for the most output, which together can handle all of the transient and average loads. The battery that maintains a DC-load-bus voltage level to the load side and the DCeDC boost converter

Battery-charging-mode

After the hybrid system starts, if the load is less than rated power of fuel cell or idle, the DCeDC boost converter will be operated to measure whether the battery voltage is less than 22 V, if yes, the controller will switch on the battery charger to
Q11 VOUT

VIN+

VDC+

Rs

Q12

BATT+

Fuel Cell 500W 11.8~16.5V

DC-DC Boost Converter

Controller Battery _ 24V 7.2/20AH

DC Load Power 0~1200W

VIN-

VDC-

VOUT-/BATT-

Fig. 2 e Structure of the hybrid fuel cell-battery systems.

Author's personal copy

13144
i n t e r n a t i o n a l j o u r n a l o f h y d r o g e n e n e r g y 3 7 ( 2 0 1 2 ) 1 3 1 4 1 e1 3 1 4 6

charge the battery. To charge the battery, it will work in following process: pre-charge, current regulate (constant current), voltage regulate (24 V constant voltage) and then stop till the battery is in fully charged conditions.

3.3.

Battery-discharging-mode (peak-sharing mode)

When the suddenly high-peak-load power is more than the rated current limit at 53 A (at 12 V) of fuel cell, it can power the battery to the load in order to avoid the fuel cell in the momentary high-current output which may result in air or fuel starvation or water imbalance phenomenon in the membrane, and reduce its efciency and cause the local hot spot of the electrolyte and damage.

3.4.

Hybrid-sources-mode

The DCeDC boost converter will be operated to convert the fuel cell power to the battery based on variable loads. When the load power is more than the rated power of fuel cell, the system can power no more than the rated power of fuel cell by switch off Q11.

3.5.

Over-load-mode

If suddenly load is larger than maximum power which the hybrid fuel cell-battery can afford, the fuel cell be momentarily supply the power under its rated power. This moment, Over-Load-Mode is set when the battery output voltage will be reduced to 22 V, and the fuel cell will be shut down.

4.

Experimental results

To illustrate the signicance and facilitate the understanding of the proposed hybrid power sources, a hardware prototype with the parameters as shown in Table 1 were constructed. Additionally, In order to validate feasibility of the loadfollowing of the proposed hybrid power sources, a programmable electric loader PLZ-6000R made by Kikusui Electronics

Corporation (in Japan) was used as the DC-load to validate feasibility of the load-following of the proposed hybrid power sources. Furthermore, for ensuring safe and correct power distribution during different stages such as start-up, normal operation, and load variation, a central controller was used to coordinate and command all the components through efcient management of the control signals, on-off signals, serial port communication, as well as various operating conditions. A programmed data acquisition unit was employed to facilitate status monitoring and experimental data collection. Moreover, a LCD panel was also xed on the front of the fuel cell pack for the observation of stack voltage, current, and error indications. Fig. 4 shows the experimental apparatus of the proposed hybrid fuel cell-battery power system. Before the fuel cell system started, the central controller was rstly activated by a key-button. Then the fuel cell system was turn-on and transited to the stand-by indication on the LCD panel. During this stage, sensors and actuators were activated and the control board began to continuously deliver data and status signals. Subsequently, the observation of stack voltage, current, and status indications triggered the starting sequence. Then the fuel cell system was on warm-up. Once the whole system began to run, the power system would enter the normal running stage until reaching a new steadystate. The sampling data was kept at 1 s through the whole experiment. Although, the real-time experiment of the hybrid sources in dynamic load is of great signicance to evaluation the system performance in both laboratory and model tests, in this study, the steady-state performance was the main focus which could reveal power-sharing between batteries and fuel cells and the efciency of fuel cells in comparison with adjusting the output current of the DCeDC boost converter. In order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed hybrid FCbattery power system, the current of fuel cells can continuously run by increasing the range from start-up to 53 A till its values at a xed decimal place as shown in Fig. 5, and the corresponding power distribution of the system among fuel cell, battery and load for varying power is shown in Fig. 6. From Fig. 6 one can see that the fuel cell current of hybrid systems with both a small capacity (24 V/7.2 Ah) and a large

Fig. 4 e Experimental apparatus of the proposed hybrid fuel cell-battery system.

Author's personal copy

i n t e r n a t i o n a l j o u r n a l o f h y d r o g e n e n e r g y 3 7 ( 2 0 1 2 ) 1 3 1 4 1 e1 3 1 4 6

13145

hmax

DGT DH0

(6)

Fig. 5 e Experimental results of fuel cell output power for a different load current.

capacity (24 V/20 Ah) of batteries, increases linearly with the increase of load current up to 40 A and then reaches its maximum current 53 A when the boost DCeDC converter sets its current limit. Beyond this point, the fuel cells maximum power output is 620 W (see Fig. 6). Therefore, the part of load power which exceeds 620 W is obviously supplied by the lithium-ion batteries. Additionally, the fuel cell hybrid systems with a large capacity, 24 V/20 Ah lithium-ion battery, increases power linearly with of load current up to 40 A and then the fuel cell reaches its maximum load power value of 620 W when the DCeDC boost converter sets its rated current limit at 53 A. However, the fuel cell hybrid systems with a small capacity, 24 V/7.2 Ah battery, increases power linearly with the increase of load current 35 A which the fuel cell reaches its maximum load power and then with a downward tendency by decreasing its power due to inadequate capacity. When the fuel cell hybrid systems power its load power below the fuel cell output power, they will be set in BatteryCharging-Mode until the battery voltage reaching 24 V again. After by now, the fuel cell hybrid systems come back to the Hybrid-Sources-Mode. On the other hand, the ideal efciency of a fuel cell considered by itself has a maximum theoretical value hmax at zero delivered power, given by [13]

where DGT is the change in free energy of the electrochemical oxidation of the fuel (J), and DH0 the enthalpy change for the total oxidation reaction of the fuel (J). However, considering the entire fuel cell system, which includes parasitic losses from equipment such as pumps, fans, blowers, heat exchangers, and the electronic control system, the practical efciency of the fuel cell system may be quite different from the theoretical value. It will depend on the system selected, the operating conditions (i.e., temperature, pressure, and fuel used), and also on the system specic technical components and balance of plant (BOP) solutions. A contribution to the understanding of fuel cell system efciency and operation under full and part load is presented in [14]. In practical operation, the maximum efciency point will occur somewhere other than (and obviously less than) maximum theoretical value hmax at zero delivered power. Since operating the fuel cell power source at its maximum power point produces poor energy efciency, and operating at the maximum efciency point does not produce rated power. In this paper, we seek instead to regulate the fuel cell current on a continuously varying basis in response to the load power demand. Fig. 7 shows the fuel cell efciencies under fuel cell, hybrid sources with a 24 V/7.2 Ah Lithium-ion Battery, and hybrid sources with a 24 V/20 Ah Lithium-ion Battery, in which, the efciency of fuel cell system was dened as follows. h Pout;FC Pin;FC (7)

where Pout, FC is the power output from fuel cell and Pin, FC is the input power. Based on the proposed hybrid power system, experimental results are intended to reect the actual behavior of the output and show that it is possible to regulate the output power limit when the fuel cell is connected to the DCeDC boost converter and then an output power-sharing is supplied by means of a switch on. Moreover, we can decide if the power delivered by the fuel cell is within its power range for any load demand. In the present study, testing was performed by channeling the

Fig. 6 e Experimental results of the hybrid power output for a different capacitor of lithium-ion batteries.

Fig. 7 e Experimented efciencies of fuel cell under different batteries.

Author's personal copy

13146
i n t e r n a t i o n a l j o u r n a l o f h y d r o g e n e n e r g y 3 7 ( 2 0 1 2 ) 1 3 1 4 1 e1 3 1 4 6

load to the DC Bus, with PWM mode control created by using a fuel cell boost converter. The experimental results show how, when it maintains a xed rated current limit value (power set at the fuel cell) and the demanded power increases, the DCeDC boost converter will be operated by the controller switch off to prevent the fuel cell from supplying it, so the battery bank provides the difference between the power demanded and that supplied by the fuel cell.

references

5.

Conclusions

In this paper, a hybrid fuel cell-battery power system with a single DCeDC boost converter is proposed to not only dramatically increases the efciency of fuel cell (FC) in partial load conditions, but also achieves more efcient for full recharging of battery in the hybrid power system when the load is less on-demand with a better overall efciency. From the experimental results, one can know that hybrid power systems using a small battery can also result in a higher fuel cell efciency when the system is operated at a heavy load. The efciency of recharging of batteries with a fuel cell system depends strongly on the battery/fuel cell size and the stand-by losses of the fuel cell. The reason is the increased efciency of the fuel cell and a small capacity of battery at lower hybrid levels of output power compensates with an increasing in charge frequencies. Therefore, fuel cells are a good and efcient power source for battery recharging for hybrid systems and bringing many advantages in comparison to systems based solely upon fuel cells or batteries.

Acknowledgment
The author would like to thank the National Science Council of Taiwan, for nancially supporting this research under Contract No. NSC 100-2221-E-233-011 and NSC 99-2632-E233001-MY3.

[1] Jiang Z, Gao L, Dougal RA. Adaptive control strategy for active power sharing in hybrid fuel cell/battery power sources. IEEE Trans Energy Conversion 2007;22(2):507e15. [2] Ragone DV. Review of battery systems for electrically powered vehicles; 1968. SAE Paper 680453. [3] Jarvis LP, Atwater TB, Cygan PJ. Hybrid power sources for land warrior scenario. IEEE Aerosp Electron. Syst Mag 2000; 15(9):37e41. [4] Xu L, Li J, Hua J, Li X, Ouyang M. Adaptive supervisory control strategy of a fuel cell/battery powered city bus. J Power Sources 2009;194(1):360e8. [5] Fontela P, Soria A, Mielgo J, Sierra JF, Blas J, Gauchia L, et al. Airport electric vehicle powered by fuel cell. J Power Sources 2007;169(1):184e93. [6] Sripakagorna A, Limwuthigraijirat N. Experimental assessment of fuel cell/supercapacitor hybrid system for scooters. Int J Hydrogen Energy 2009;34(15):6036e44. [7] Zhang X, Mi CC, Masrur A, Daniszewski D. Wavelettransform-based power management of hybrid vehicles with multiple on board energy sources including fuel cell, battery and ultracapacitor. J Power Sources 2008;185(2):1533e43. [8] Erdinc O, Vural B, Uzunoglu M, Ates Y. Modeling and analysis of an FC/UC hybrid vehicular power system using a waveletfuzzy logic based loading sharing and control algorithm. Int J Hydrogen Energy 2009;34(12):5223e33. [9] Thounthong P, Rael S, Davat B. Energy management of fuel cell/battery/supercapacitor hybrid power source for vehicle applications. J Power Sources 2009;192(1):376e85. [10] Feroldi D, Serra M, Riera J. Energy management strategies based on efciency map for fuel cell hybrid vehicles. J Power Sources 2009;190(2):387e401. [11] Bizon N. Nonlinear control of fuel cell hybrid power sources: part I- voltage control. Appl Energy 2011;88:2559e73. [12] Bizon N. Nonlinear control of fuel cell hybrid power sources: part II- current control. Appl Energy 2011;88:2574e91. [13] Larminie James, Dick Andrew. Electric vehicle technology explained. 2nd ed. Willey Press; 2003. p. 54. [14] Thorstensen B. A parameter study of fuel cell system efciency under full and part load operation. J Power Sources 2001;92:9e16.