Fuel flow control of a PEM Fuel Cell with MPPT

Abstract

In this paper, a Fuel Cell (FC) Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) with fuel flow optimization is developed. The aim of this study is to extract the maximum power from a FC at different fuel flow rates and to protect the FC from over-current and voltage collapses across terminals. The system is composed of a tracker with a buck converter able to change the impedance and therefore the FC power. In order to illustrate our approach, simulation results show the behavior of the tracker at different fuel flow rates and verify the concept of maximum power tracking.