Fuel Cell Management System: PEMFC Lifetime Optimization by Model Based Approach

Durability and performance of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) are the main bottlenecks preventing their widespread use in automotive applications. This manuscript investigates the possibility of employing an optimized management law for such cells; the law, computed off-line, aims at reducing the physical cell degradations and the loss of performance during operations, by choosing an appropriate set of operating conditions which can still deliver the desired power output. High-fidelity simulations results are reported, which show the effectiveness of the proposed model based approach.