Patent ID: 8323844

Claim:
A fuel cell operation system, comprising: a fuel cell; a fuel gas supply device that supplies a fuel gas to an anode side of the fuel cell; an oxidizing gas supply device that supplies an oxidizing gas to a cathode side of the fuel cell; an inlet side flow path that connects between the oxidizing gas supply device and a cathode side gas inlet of the fuel cell; an outlet side flow path connected from a cathode side gas outlet of the fuel cell to an exhaust side; a bypass flow path that connects between the inlet side flow path and the outlet side flow path and is arranged in parallel with the fuel cell; a control valve provided in at least one of the inlet side flow path and the outlet side flow path to adjust a gas flow rate at the cathode side; a bypass valve provided in the bypass flow path to adjust a gas flow rate in the bypass flow path; and a control unit that controls operation of the fuel cell, wherein the control unit is programmed to: obtain a bypass valve differential pressure which is a differential pressure between upstream and downstream of the bypass valve by applying an open amount of the bypass valve and the gas flow rate in the bypass flow path to pre-obtained flow characteristics of the bypass valve; and obtain an open amount of the control valve by applying the bypass valve differential pressure and the cathode side gas flow rate to both characteristics of pre-obtained cathode side flow characteristics of the fuel cell and flow characteristics of the control valve.