Fault Detection and Isolation of a Real PEM Fuel Cell using Interval LPV Observers1 and the support from the National Science and Technology Council (CONACYT) Mexico.

The purpose of this paper is to design a Fault Detection and Isolation (FDI) system based on interval LPV observers with application to a real fuel cell. The interval LPV observer is used to generate an adaptive threshold to enhance the robustness of the fault detection test. Real field data and system identification techniques are used to identify the nominal model as well as its uncertainty. Since fuel cells are highly non-linear systems when operating in their whole range of operation, a LPV model is used. Finally, fault isolation is based on an algorithm that uses the residual fault sensitivity. Several fault scenarios are used to show the performance of the proposed approach.