A Comparative Study of the Kalman Filter and the LSTM Network for the Remaining Useful Life Prediction of SOFC

The solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) system is complicated because the characteristics of gas, heat, and electricity are intricately coupled. During the operation of the system, problems such as frequent failures and a decrease in the stack’s performance have caused the SOFC system to work less well and greatly shortened the SOFC’s practical life. As such, it is essential to accurately forecast its remaining useful life (RUL) to make the system last longer and cut down on economic losses. In this study, both model-based and data-driven prediction methods are used to make predictions about the RUL of SOFC. First, the linear degradation model of the SOFC system is established by introducing degradation resistance as the index of health status. Using the Kalman filtering (KF) method, the health status of SOFC is evaluated online. The results of the health state estimation indicated that the KF algorithm is accurate enough to provide a good basis for the model-based RUL prediction. Then, a long short-term memory (LSTM) network-recursive (data-driven) method is presented for RUL prognostics. The multi-step-ahead recursive strategy of updating the network state with actual test data improves the prediction accuracy. Finally, a comparison is made between the LSTM network prediction approach suggested and the model-based KF prognostics. The results of the experiments indicate that the LSTM network is more suitable for RUL prediction than the KF algorithm.