Proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC) are considered an
environment-friendly alternative vehicle power in the future owing to their high
power density and zero-carbon emission. To research the performance of the air
supplied by the PEMFC air system, the PEMFC air system bench composed of an air
compressor, cooler, emulated stack, back-pressure valve, and sensors was built.
Then, a PEMFC system test bench composed of a hydrogen supply subsystem, stack,
air supply subsystem, electronic control subsystem, and cooling subsystem was
established. The fuel cell system control parameters and control method are
complex due to the coupling and nonlinearity of the air supply system. The
strategy composed of a feedforward table and piecewise proportional integral
(PI) feedback control strategy was employed to regulate the pressure and flow
rate of the air supply system. The air compressor map and the mapping
relationship among the air compressor speed, opening of the back-pressure valve,
and stack current were obtained by carrying out experiments on the PEMFC air
system bench. The results show that the air pressure and flow rate follow the
reference value, and the flow error and pressure error are 1.5 g/s and 0.25 kPa,
respectively. The proposed strategy can coordinately control the air flow rate
and pressure, and it can provide qualified pressure and flow rate for the PEMFC
stack.