Control algorithm design for degradation mitigation and lifetime improvement of Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells

The improvement of reliability, durability and availability of fuel cell systems represents a key factor for their mass-market deployment in several application areas. The development of advanced algorithms oriented towards fuel cell system monitoring, diagnostics, prognostics and control can significantly reduce the incidence of degradation mechanisms and faulty events on fuel cell performance and durability. Therefore, a valuable increase in system efficiency and lifetime can be achieved by proper design of such algorithms, especially for applications working under highly variable load profiles. The present work deals with the design of a model-based control algorithm aimed at mitigating degradation effects on a Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) system. Such an algorithm embeds cell degradation models, describing Ostwald ripening and Platinum dissolution mechanisms, which affects the cell Electrochemical Surface Area. The control algorithm is developed aiming at PEMFC durability improvement, while ensuring user power request, and its performance is evaluated in simulated environment addressing stationary power generation applications with variable load profile and comparing the cell degradation decay under different control strategies.