Optimal Heat Recovery and Electricity Production from a Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell's Operation

In this paper a comprehensive optimal control model was developed, which maximizes the thermal energy recovery out of the proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) toward the hot water storage tank (HWST), whilst maximizing electricity supplied from the PV solar panels to the load and minimizes the electricity cost of the utility. Actual and accurate exogenous historic data collected from a weather station related to this study. Simulations were conducted on the optimal control model of PEMFC water heating system was conducted successfully using MATLAB. The optimal control regime that is proposed in this paper evaluates a standard utility grid system (baseline), where the load is purely supplied by the grid which consumed 102.48 kWh. The simulation results yield the grid supplied 5.57 kWh to the load and 53.69 kWh to the PEMWE, whilst the PEMFC produced 55.05 kWh for the load demand. Furthermore, a maximum thermal energy recovery of 4.15 x10 ⁶ J, which can be translated to 1.15 kWh, is achieved. The heat recovery process from the PEMFC's operation, could extend the for the degradation of the membrane to a thickness of 50% of the original size by as much as 0.91 years.