Modeling the cathode pressure dynamics in the Buckeye Bullet II 540 kW hydrogen PEM fuel cell system

摘要

The Buckeye Bullet 2 (BB2) is the world's fastest hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, with an international speed record of 302.9 mph. In order to achieve the power levels necessary for reaching the top speed, a unique gas supply system was designed to feed the PEM fuel cell modules. Stored Heliox with 40% oxygen content was used as the oxidizer and supplied to the cathode at high pressure. The high oxygen concentration at the cathode leads to a high rate of water formation in the GDL, with considerable influence on the pressure dynamics. For this reason, a precise monitoring of the pressure and water formation is required so that the cathode can operate at the maximum allowable pressure. This paper presents a novel control-oriented modeling approach to predict the cathode pressure dynamics of the BB2 PEM fuel cell system, developed for system optimization, monitoring and control. A distributed-parameter model was designed to characterize the liquid water formation and transport in the cathode channels, starting from the conservation laws for viscous fluid flow. The model was validated against a set of laboratory tests and actual race data. In this context, the proposed model is compared to a well known control-oriented PEM fuel cell model, to illustrate how the ability to predict the water transport at high reaction rates allows for an improved prediction of the pressure dynamics.