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| Title: | Degradation-conscious control and state estimation of marine solid oxide fuel cells | | | Authors: | A. Caspani, R.R. Negenborn, V. Reppa |
| | Journal: | European Journal of Control | | |
| | Abstract: | Continuous improvement in terms of safety and resilience in safety-critical engineering systems is the basis for technological progress and its societal acceptance. The maritime sector, which is currently shifting towards cleaner and more efficient technologies, is no exception, with its own needs and challenges. Solid oxide fuel cells stand out as promising alternatives for onboard power generation, guaranteeing high efficiency and fuel flexibility. However, safety concerns, slow transient capabilities and degradation still hinder their large-scale adoption. Degradation-conscious control can address these limitations by explicitly accounting for degradation within the control loop, by defining operational profiles that balance between real time performance and long term reliability. This work presents a degradation-conscious control framework that integrates a moving horizon estimator, which estimates system states and degradation from available data, with a nonlinear model predictive controller for marine solid oxide fuel cells, which controls the system while accounting for degradation. The proposed method enables real-time power regulation while actively reducing and limiting the degradation rate, resulting in a lower cumulated degradation in the long term. A performance analysis is conducted to identify how the horizon length of the estimator and the controller influence the method overall effectiveness. Comparative simulations assess the long-term effects of a degradation-conscious approach versus less degradation-aware strategies, demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed method in significantly reducing cumulative degradation without compromising real-time tracking performance. |
| | Reference: | Degradation-conscious control and state estimation of marine solid oxide fuel cells. A. Caspani, R.R. Negenborn, V. Reppa. Accepted for publication in European Journal of Control, 2026. | | | Request: | A
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