Estimating the end-of-life of PEM fuel cells: Guidelines and metrics

Abstract

Prognostics applications on PEMFC are developing these last years. Indeed, taking decision to extend the lifetime of a PEMFC stack based on behavior and remaining useful life predictions is seen as a promising solution to tackle the too short life's issue of PEMFCs. However, the development of prognostics shows some lacks in the literature. Indeed, performing prognostics requires health indicators that reflect the state of health of stack, while being able to interpret them in an industrial context. It is also important to propose criteria to set its end of life. Moreover, to trust any prognostics' application, one should be able to evaluate the performance of its algorithms with respect to standards. To help launching a discussion on these subjects among scientific and industrial actors, this paper addresses some of the issues encountered when performing prognostics of a PEMFC stack. After showing the link between prognostics and decision, this paper proposes guidelines to set the limits of a prognostics approach. The definitions of healthy and degraded modes are discussed as well as how to choose the time instant to perform predictions. Then, three criteria based on the power produced by the stack are proposed as indicators of the state of health of the stack. The definition of the end of life of the stack is also discussed before proposing some criteria to assess the performance of any prognostics algorithm on a PEMFC. Some perspectives of works are also discussed before concluding.

Prognostics of a multistack PEMFC system with multiagent modeling

“…The degradation of a PEMFC stack can be modeled by data‐driven and physics‐of‐failure based models . In this work, a simplified physical model derived from a bond graph model for a PEMFC stack is adopted .…”

“…With the monitored data until time k 0 , the RUL of a PEMFC stack is the time left before its health indicator reaches a predefined threshold. Different health indicators can be defined, for example, the output power, the cumulative energy, the efficiency with respect of the current . In this paper the end of life is defined as the time that the value of α k reaches a predefined threshold α EoL .…”

“…Fuel cells producing heat and electricity through chemical reactions are attracting the attention of industries and researchers in recent years. Among the different fuel cells types, Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) is the most developed one and is not far from large‐scale deployment . The chemical reaction between the hydrogen and oxygen in PEMFC produces electricity, heat, and water, with no poisonous gases emission …”

A review on prognostics and health monitoring of proton exchange membrane fuel cell

“…A behavioural model suitable for PEMFC prognostics was developed by to each parameter that influences the lifetime [141]. Hence agreed definitions…”

“…For example 0 -5% of power loss is good state of health (SOH), 5 -10% of power loss is acceptable SOH and more than 10% power loss can be taken as degraded SOH [141].…”