Enhancing Fuel-Cell Longevity via Multi-Objective Dynamic Programming

Proton-exchange-membrane fuel cells are emerging as a key technology for clean electric vehicles. However, degradation mechanisms arising from operating conditions hinder the market entry of fuel cell electric vehicles. Therefore, an energy management strategy is crucial to optimize fuel-cell operation while minimizing both degradation and hydrogen consumption. Accordingly, this paper proposes a two-state multi-objective dynamic programming approach to address this problem. Compared to the conventional approach that considers only hydrogen consumption, the simulation results reveal a significant reduction of 98.38% in fuel-cell degradation, accompanied by a slight increase in fuel consumption. This reduction in fuel-cell degradation is achieved by limiting start-stop cycles and transient loading on the fuel-cell stack.