Experimental Research on the Dynamic Characteristics and Voltage Uniformity of a PEMFC Stack under Subzero Temperatures

Pengcheng Liu and Sichuan Xu
Additional contact information
Pengcheng Liu: School of Automotive Studies, Tongji University, Shanghai 201804, China
Sichuan Xu: School of Automotive Studies, Tongji University, Shanghai 201804, China

Energies, 2022, vol. 15, issue 9, 1-14

Abstract: The working life of a stack is basically determined by the behavior of its weakest monomer; therefore, during a dynamic loading process, high-voltage uniformity plays a key role in stack durability. This work experimentally investigated dynamic responses and voltage uniformity with different loading strategies from an initial state (open-circuit state) to a target current at subzero temperatures. The results presented that the maximum voltage coefficient variation Cv values, representing the relative standard deviation of the monomer voltage, increased from 19.75 to 35.65 and the voltage uniformity sharply decreased with the increase in loading sizes at the stack temperature of −4 °C. It was possible that this could result in the instability of the single cell voltage output and a voltage uniformity fluctuation with a high step loading amplitude. The voltage uniformity became worse as the stack temperature decreased from −2 °C to −8 °C, the voltage uniformity between single cells of the stack continued to deteriorate under a step current density of 0.15 A/cm 2 at a relatively low temperature of −8 °C. By comparing several constant loading rate strategies, it could be ascertained that reducing the loading rate was conducive to voltage uniformity in the whole investigated process. A comparison of the different loading rates indicated that the square increasing loading rate strategy is the best strategy among them and a Cv threshold of 5.5 can be obtained during the whole load process at a temperature of −4 °C, which might be a guideline and provide a reference in actual engineering applications for PEMFC dynamic loading responses.

Keywords: proton exchange membrane fuel cells; voltage uniformity; dynamic characteristics; subzero temperatures (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/9/3062/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/9/3062/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:15:y:2022:i:9:p:3062-:d:799541

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().