Impact of Optimized Value for Relative Humidity at Cathode in PEMFC for Improved Stack Performance

Abstract

Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFC) is now emerging an eco-friendly solution of the future to conventional energy systems. The cell performance is influenced by various parameters such as operating temperature and also reactant pressure, flow rates, and relative humidity. Maintaining the critical parameters in required levels is very essential for ensuring efficient performance from the PEMFC system. This paper presents the effect of optimizing cathode Relative Humidity (RHc) on stack performance. Here, the most popular optimization algorithms like Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Simulated Annealing (SA) are used for finding the optimum value of RHc. A performance evaluation between these algorithms is presented based on the voltage regulation obtained from the PEMFC stack for a PEMFC model in Simulink with intelligent controllers like fuzzy and neuro-fuzzy controllers.