Enhanced Monitoring and Prediction of PEMFC Degradation During Accelerated Stress Test

Deploying Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFC) in heavy-duty vehicles to achieve zero greenhouse gas emissions requires individual components and assembled stacks to have exceptionally long lifespans, up to 30,000 hours. Therefore, test and analysis methods must be developed to accurately simulate real-world operating conditions while significantly accelerating the aging process for components and stacks. Within this context, a method to monitor two of the most critical internal states of the PEMFC, Electrochemical Surface Area and PEM thickness, based on sequential polarization (I-V) curves is proposed. Moreover, a process is used to deduce the I-V curves from dynamic data to avoid losing durability information and/or accurately determining the characterization intervals.