| Energy Engineering |
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| Development of a system configuration for a solar powered hydrogen facility using fuzzy logic control |
| Ying-tai Loong, Mahidzal Dahari, Hwa-jen Yap, Hue-yee Chong |
| Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University Malaya, Kuala Lumpur 50603, Malaysia |
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Abstract Solar energy is a natural resource which can be harnessed to provide clean electricity for hydrogen production systems. However, this technology is not widely used because of control issues, particularly for hydrogen refuelling stations. At present, direct or DC-DC converter couplings are the most common system configurations for hydrogen refuelling stations. However, these system configurations are costly and suffer from gas shortage at hydrogen refuelling stations. Furthermore, the hydrogen produced by such system configurations varies considerably depending on the levels of solar radiation. In order to address these issues, a new system configuration is proposed, incorporating the feedback signal of the storage level in the control system. The photovoltaic (PV) system, electrolyzer, and storage tank are integrated with a fuzzy logic controller (FLC) to determine the backup current compensation for electrolyzer operation in order to obtain the minimum power required for hydrogen production. The proposed FLC is constructed with three input variables which are the PV current, hydrogen storage level, and the battery state of charge. The rules-based fuzzy inference process is based on the proposed configuration which combines the advantages of direct and DC-DC converter coupling configurations. The simulation results show that the proposed configuration offers better adaptability to variable radiation conditions compared to other methods. This gives a more promising option for ensuring the adequacy of hydrogen supply at hydrogen refuelling stations.
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Received: 15 July 2013
Published: 04 November 2013
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