Performance comparison of PEMFC hydrogen reformer with different controllers

Abstract

The renewable energy technology has become very popular due to major constraint in the existing electrical system such as high electricity demand, increased in fuel prices and concern of environmental pollution. The aims of this project are to develop a complete Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) model with hydrogen reformer by using MATLAB/Simulink with three different controllers and comparison between the three controllers will be discussed. This project presents the development of methods to solve the problem of PEMFC output voltage by using different controllers which are Proportional Integral (PI), Proportional Integral Derivatives (PID) and Proportional Integral Fuzzy (PI-Fuzzy) controllers. The Ziegler Nicholas tuning method is used to tune PI and PID gains in a Simulink model. It helps the system to achieve a balance between performance and robustness for both controllers. The Mamdani type was used to develop the fuzzy controller in Simulink model. The transient performances that will be discussed are rise time, settling time, maximum overshoot, and percentage of overshoot. The results show that the proposed PI-Fuzzy is better than the conventionally used PI and PID controllers.