The invention relates to regulating the temperature of an electrical power supply device. The field of application of the invention is more particularly that of cells, in particular fuel cells.
The purpose of regulating the temperature of a fuel cell is to compensate for thermal disturbances in the cell and/or to track a change in the setpoint for the temperature of the cell. In general, the temperature of a fuel cell is regulated by a cooling fluid flowing through a cooling circuit.
A traditional scheme for regulating the temperature of a fuel cell is shown in FIG. 5. In that scheme, the cell 101 is cooled by a cooling fluid traveling through the cell 101 via a cooling circuit 109 that passes through the bipolar plates of the cell so as to absorb the heat given off by the reaction in the cell 101. The cooling fluid is fed from a cold source 111 connected to the cooling circuit 109. Furthermore, the cooling circuit 109 is controlled by a control loop 105 provided with control means 105a that regulate the flow rate Qc of the cooling fluid as a function of a measurement of the temperature Tsm of the cooling fluid at the outlet from the cell 101.
Nevertheless, the control loop 105 responds solely to needs for servo-controlling the temperature of the cell 101 and does not respond to safety problems that might arise, e.g. in the event of failure in varying the flow rate of the cooling fluid, or in the event of other kinds of failure.