Active Disturbance Rejection Controller Design for Oxygen Excess Ratio of Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell

Efficient oxygen excess ratio (OER) control has a vital impact on prolonging the lifetime and excavating the potential for net power improvement of proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). However, unknown uncertainties such as dynamic load scenarios, system nonlinearity, and noise make OER control challenging. In this article, the active disturbance rejection controller (ADRC) is applied to control the ORE at its set value by manipulating the compressor voltage. It regards the uncertainties of nonlinearity and disturbance as the “lumped disturbance”, and then the extended state observer (ESO) is designed to estimate and compensate it in real-time. Next, according to the structure of ADRC, the final control law is derived. Finally, a high-fidelity model is used to verify the controller, and the simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of the designed controller compared to the baseline controller.