Fuel Cell Cooling Control: Efficient Pump Flow Management
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Summary
Problems
Existing fuel cell stack cooling systems face challenges in efficiently supplying refrigerant at suitable flow rates while managing control load, as conventional cooperative and individual pump speed control methods either compromise flow rate suitability or increase control complexity.
Innovation solutions
A method and device that calculates actual pump flow rates, common and individual pressure losses, and operates pumps using total pressure loss and required flow rates to individually set pump speeds, ensuring suitable refrigerant supply to each fuel cell stack while reducing control load.
TRIZ Analysis
Specific contradictions:
General conflict description:
Principle concept:
If cooperative control with uniform rotational speed is used, then control load is reduced, but refrigerant flow rate suitability for each fuel cell stack deteriorates
Why choose this principle:
The patent segments the control system by dividing pressure loss calculations into common pressure loss (shared by all stacks) and individual pressure loss (specific to each stack). This segmentation allows uniform rotational speed control while maintaining individual flow rate suitability through separate pressure loss compensation for each stack.
Principle concept:
If cooperative control with uniform rotational speed is used, then control load is reduced, but refrigerant flow rate suitability for each fuel cell stack deteriorates
Why choose this principle:
The patent applies local quality by calculating individual pressure loss specific to each fuel cell stack's flow path characteristics. This enables tailored refrigerant flow rate control for each stack while maintaining overall system coordination through common pressure loss calculation, resolving the contradiction between uniform control and individual suitability.
Application Domain
Data Source
AI summary:
A method and device that calculates actual pump flow rates, common and individual pressure losses, and operates pumps using total pressure loss and required flow rates to individually set pump speeds, ensuring suitable refrigerant supply to each fuel cell stack while reducing control load.
Abstract
A cooling control method includes (a) calculating an actual pump flow rate for each pump, (b) calculating a radiator flow rate using a sum of actual pump flow rates for each pump, (c) calculating a common pressure loss that is a pressure loss for a common flow path, of a refrigerant passage, that is common to fuel cell stacks using the radiator flow rate, (d) calculating an individual pressure loss that is a pressure loss for each individual flow path, of the refrigerant passage, corresponding to each of the fuel cell stacks, and (e) causing each pump to operate using a total pressure loss obtained by summing the common pressure loss and the individual pressure losses and a required pump flow rate for each pump.