A Practical Compound Controller Design for Solid Oxide Fuel Cells

Solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) has emerged as a promising technology in the family of clean electricity generation methods. However, it is challenging to control the output voltage at the desired value due to the strong nonlinearity, slow dynamics and actuator saturation. The biggest difficulty comes from the constraint on the fuel utilization in a transient response. This paper is dedicated to develop an engineering friendly control structure to fulfill the comprehensive objectives. A basic PI feedback controller is utilized to accommodate the nonlinearity. The dynamic response is accelerated via a feedforward action. A compensation block is designed to satisfy the constraint requirement. The simulation shows that the resulting performance is similar to that of the latest model predictive control (MPC) design, demonstrating that the various difficulties can be effectively handled under the framework of conventional control.