Patent ID: 8889311

Claim:
A fuel cell system comprising: a fuel cell stack; a backpressure valve in fluid communication with an outlet of the fuel cell stack; and a controller comprising at least one processor, an input, and output and a memory, the memory configured to store instructions related to a plurality of models comprising a plurality of pressure drop models, a stack capacitance model and a valve position model, the controller is programmed to execute the instructions in memory to generate a command signal to regulate the position of the backpressure valve, the command signal comprising a feedforward component and a feedback component where the feedforward component is determined using output from the valve position model that has been modified by the stack capacitance model and at least one of the plurality of pressure drop models, wherein the stack capacitance model modifies the output based on the Ideal Gas Law according to: d ⁢ ⁢ m cap = ( p stck , fd - p prdtd ) * V R * T stck · M air where dm cap is an offset term to modify the stack flow setpoint signal, R is gas constant, T stck is the stack flow temperature, V is the volume of the fuel cell stack and M air is the airflow molecular weight.