VALIDATION OF SEMI-EMPIRICAL TEMPERATURE MODEL OF PEMFC USING ATOM SEARCH OPTIMIZATION ALGORITHM

Abstract

Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) has unique thermal characteristics. The change in PEMFC temperature directly effects the PEMFC performance. The voltage and temperature of PEMFC at different loading/ambient conditions is not easy to predict. In this work a newly developed semi-empirical model is used and the parameters of the model are optimized for single cell PEMFC (base-case) by using atom search optimization. The semi-empirical model was developed and tested for stack PEMFC system but any model developed for PEMFC cannot be validated unless it is effective for single-cell PEMFC system. The new parameters show promising results and hence the model works is considered as good model. Previously due to unknown base-case parameters the ranges selected for parameters are extremely large. In this model by considering the base-case parameters and previously extracted parameters the new short ranges for parameters are given so that in future the optimization of parameters will take less time and this increases the chances of this model to be used in online prediction of PEMFC temperature.