(Invited) Optimized Conditioning and Performance of PEM Fuel Cell Stacks

Abstract

The fuel cell market is maturing, and the production volumes are increasing. In parallel, expectations on performance, lifetime and operational range for fuel cell stacks are growing. As fuel cell technology matures, more fuel cell stacks are used in real life applications instead of laboratory environment. These positive developments bring with them new challenges and opportunities to learn. Several of these challenges and their impact on stack design and validation will be discussed. The focus will be on optimization of useful stack power density, fuel cell stack conditioning, enlarging the LT-PEM fuel cell operation range and on durability testing. This talk addresses why conditioning and durability testing are closely connected and illustrates how this can impact stack platform and fuel cell development. In addition, the interactions between power density, stack integration and stack operational window are illustrated showing how each of these parameters could be optimized utilizing a current distribution plate and what trade-offs are relevant for optimized fuel cell stack and system performance. Powercell is active in various market segments and has developed stacks and stack components for ~20 years. The optimizations and trade-offs described hinge heavily on key PEM stack requirements which can be widely different in different PEM fuel cell market sectors, as illustrated by the emerging usage of fuel cells in aviation.

Key findings

• ▸Conditioning and durability testing are closely connected and impact stack platform and fuel cell development.
• ▸A current distribution plate can be used to optimize power density, stack integration, and operational window.
• ▸Trade-offs are relevant for optimized fuel cell stack and system performance.

Keywords

Identifiers

DOI

10.1149/ma2024-02463264mtgabs

Journal

ECS Meeting Abstracts

Year

2024