Adaptive Control of a Nonlinear Fuel Cell-Gas Turbine Balance of Plant Simulation Facility

A 300kW Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Gas Turbine (SOFC-GT) power plant simulator is evaluated with the use of a Model Reference Adaptive Control scheme, implemented for a set of nonlinear empirical Transfer Functions. The SOFC-GT simulator allows testing of various fuel cell models under a Hardware-in-the-Loop configuration that incorporates a 120kW Auxiliary Power Unit, and Balance-of-Plant components in hardware, and a fuel cell model in software. The adaptation technique is beneficial to plants having a wide range of operation, and strong coupling interaction. The practical implementation of the adaptive methodology is presented through simulation in the MATLAB/SIMULINK environment.© 2014 ASME