Model Predictive Control for Thermal Management of Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Stack

Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) is usually composed of the SOFC stack and peripheral auxiliary subsystems. The SOFC stack is the main part of the battery. Its temperature control, namely thermal management, is the key to the safe, long-term and efficient operation of the battery system.This paper first introduces the system architecture, then lists the general Model equation, and then defines the Control objective. According to the information, the stack is modeled in MATLAB/Simulink environment, and then the Model Predictive Control (MPC) is used to select multiple variable pairs,in order to achieve closed-loop thermal management of the SOFC stack under the output constraints, to ensure that each link of the stack in the appropriate temperature to achieve long-term, efficient operation.The simulation shows that the changes of various temperatures in the system are within a reasonable range through the demonstration of the output waveform, the average temperature in the stack is stabilized at about 1045K, and the inlet temperature of the stack is stabilized at 978K, and the outlet temperature of the stack is stabilized at 1063K, which perfectly achieves the expected goal.