Performance Evaluation of Various Fractional Order Control Strategies on a Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell

Proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells are one potential green energy option for fuel cells, which are becoming more popular in the energy production industry. Despite the fact that it continues to draw a lot of interest, many obstacles, such as enhancing performance, boosting durability and reducing cost are impeding the fuel cells commercialization. Air/hydrogen feed has an impact on the fuel cell performance; as a result, the cathode side of the fuel cell supply manifold pressure must be regulated. Substantial power is used when operating at maximum load, and fuel cells may experience oxygen starvation due to inadequate air. Maintaining a quick and adequate air concentration in the fuel cell cathode is essential to avoiding oxygen starvation and maximizing durability. In this paper, to solve the issues of oxygen starvation in a PEM fuel cell, various fractional order control strategies are developed, and comparative analysis is done to maintain the supply manifold pressure based on error analysis and control effort. The transfer function model of a PEM fuel cell is considered and various fractional order control strategies are designed for the control of supply manifold pressure in the fuel cell. Based on simulation using MATLAB/SIMULINK software, it is observed that fractional order PID controller yields enhanced performance when compared to other fractional order controller design techniques such as fractional filter cascaded with integer order PI/PID and fractional order PI controllers.