Proton exchange membrane fuel cell fault and degradation detection using a coefficient of variance method

Abstract

Proton exchange membrane fuel cell is a clean energy generator as it emits water as a by-product. The fuel cell has various applications in stationary power generation and transportation. However, there is a need to improve durability for transportation applications. Fuel cell durability is limited as its performance degrades over a period due to aging, and fault conditions. In this study, we have compared fuel cell performance by using a new cell, and an aged cell. Degradation due to aging is experimented with by using a membrane that was operated for more than 2000 hours. Fuel cell performance degrades around 90% due to aging. Moreover, experimentally faults were created to study the degradation of fuel cell performance. We created three faults in the fuel cell system: Water flooding, reactant gas starvation, and high operating temperature. Fuel cell performance observed more than 30% degradation during the fault conditions. Furthermore, the coefficient of variance technique is used to detect aging, and the fault condition.

Keywords

• Coefficient of variance
• Degradation
• Fault
• Fuel cell
• PEM

Supporting Institution

Department of Automobile Engineering, PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore, India

Thanks

We sincerely thank Dr. P. Karthikeyan for his guidance. We are thankful to his research group for helping us in the experimentation.

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