Experimental real-time optimization of a solid oxide fuel cell stack via constraint adaptation

The experimental validation of a real-time optimization (RTO) strategy for the optimal operation of a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) stack is reported in this paper. Unlike many existing studies, the RTO approach presented here utilizes the constraint-adaptation methodology, which assumes that the optimal operating point lies on a set of active constraints and then seeks to satisfy those constraints in practice via the addition of a correction term to each constraint function. These correction terms, also referred to as “modifiers”, correspond to the difference between predicted and measured constraint values and are updated at each steady-state iteration, thereby allowing the RTO to iteratively meet the optimal operating conditions of an SOFC stack despite significant plant-model mismatch. The effects of the filter parameters used in the modifier update and of the RTO frequency on the general performance of the algorithm are also investigated.