On Controllability and Observability of Linearized Liquid Water Distributions Inside a PEM Fuel Cell

We analyze the controllability and observability (C/O) of first principles-based numeric and reduced semi-analytic PEMFC models, with emphasis on the effects of model reduction on these analyses. The numeric model is a partial differential equation (PDE) based model approximated by difference equations, including both channels and both GDL of a PEMFC. The reduced model uses a semi-analytic solution (SAS) method, which is a combination of analytic and numeric solutions, gaining physical intuition at lower computational cost. The C/O analysis is based on linearizations around multiple operating points of the numeric and the semi-analytic models. The results indicate that stabilizability of the anode water states is possible.