The Development of Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) Emulator

This paper introduces the development of a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) emulator that mimics the behavior of an actual fuel cell for testing, design, control and optimization. The emulator is developed from a lumped solid oxide fuel cell model in a Matlab/Simulink environment, and programmed to a dSPACE and/or DSP controller for real-time applications. The controller generates an output control voltage, which is fed to a linear power amplifier capable of high output current. The emulator is tested for various cell temperatures, flow rate concentrations and load changes to predict the static and dynamic response. The test results are compared with experimental data to validate the SOFC emulator.