Air supply regulation for PEMFC systems based on uncertainty and disturbance estimation

In this paper, a novel system analysis and controller design method for the air supply of proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell systems is proposed. Firstly, a class of nonlinear systems with specific structures are introduced. In further analysis, the introduced system can be divided into two parts: one is fast and include disturbances and uncertainty, and the other is relatively slow. We change the introduced system into an equivalent cascade system. Some state variables of the first subsystem are acted as the inputs of the second subsystem. Furthermore, the similarities between the air supply system and the equivalent cascade system are proved, and a cascade controller is proposed based on uncertainty and disturbance estimation (UDE) and Lyapunov method. Moreover, we implement the algorithm in the air supply system for PEM fuel cells. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed method.