Operating conditions control for extending Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell lifetime

In this paper, an optimization of operating conditions dedicated to PEMFC (Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell lifetime) durability has been addressed. On the one hand, the fuel cell voltage has a great effect on its ageing rate, thus a judicious choice of the voltage working range could extend significantly the fuel cell lifetime. On the other hand, the fuel cell voltage depends greatly on the temperature, cathode stoichiometry factor and current. Indeed, the objective of this work is to compute the optimal triplet (air stoichiometry, current, temperature) in order to operate the fuel cell in the optimal way. In other words, determining the operating conditions to prevent the most detrimental conditions. This work deals with the fuel cell durability issue and proposes a novel idea to fulfill the load power while decelerating the degradation rate of fuel cell components. The use of the reference voltage criterion to slow down the ageing rate has not been explored so far in the literature, and the proposed algorithm could be implemented easily in real life applications.