Modelling and Identification of Oxygen Excess Ratio of Self-Humidified PEM Fuel Cell System

Abstract

One essential parameter in fuel cell operation is oxygen excess ratio which describes comparison between reacted and supplied oxygen number in cathode. Oxygen excess ratio relates to fuel cell safety and lifetime. This paper explains development of air feed model and oxygen excess ratio calculation in commercial self-humidified PEM fuel cell system with 1 kW output power. This modelling was developed from measured data which was limited in open loop system. It was carried out to get relationship between oxygen excess ratio with stack output current and fan motor voltage. It generated fourth-order 56.26% best fit ARX linear polynomial model estimation (loss function = 0.0159, FPE = 0.0159) and second-order ARX nonlinear model estimation with 75 units of wavenet estimator with 84.95% best fit (loss function = 0.0139). The second-order ARX model linearization yielded 78.18% best fit (loss function = 0.0009, FPE = 0.0009).