A comparative study between a 20-sim and a Simulink single PEM cell model

This paper presents the development of a cell models for proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell. The models have been implemented in MATLAB/SIMULINK and 20-sim environments. A comparative study was carried out in this manuscript between a Simulink and bond graph model of a 200-W stack (Electrochem Inc.) PEM cell, in order to understand its voltage behavior. After an overview of its operation, this paper proposes a PEM cell model supplied with pure hydrogen and oxygen. This model takes into account physico-chemical, electrochemical and thermal phenomena that can be found in a PEMFC. We propose a static model with dissociated electrodes which involves classical laws to describe the different phenomena in a stack. In essence, this model is directly implanted, firstly, under Matlab-Simulink, secondly under 20-sim software. The implementations are described. The given comparative study between the different modeling approaches is given to show the great advantages of the bond graph approach in the design process of fuel cell systems.