6. Control/Supervision

As shown in the general diagram of the fuel cell system, the control/supervisory unit plays a central role in orchestrating the control of the entire system. It is responsible for drawing up control instructions for each of the constituent sub-systems (motor-compressor unit, humidifier, static converter, cooling circuit, gas inlet, etc.).

To do this, it will use a number of physical sensors within the system. Ideally, these can be of various kinds: thermocouples, voltage and current measurements, at stack level or per unit cell, flow measurements, pressure measurements, humidity measurements, etc. However, in the context of a low-cost fuel cell system, only the most affordable measurements will be retained (current, voltage and temperature measurements) – see table 3 ). For other quantities, the aim will...