Study on the influence of segmented fuel cell by grooving method and its application in oxygen starvation diagnosis

The oxygen starvation in fuel cells is an important reason for the deterioration of durability. The segmented fuel cell is a method to study the gas distribution inside the fuel cell. In order to study the influence of the grooving method on segmented fuel cell and its application in oxygen starvation diagnosis, a five-serpentine-channel three-dimensional two-phase simulation model is established by FLUENT. Through steady-state simulation, the effect of grooving method on fuel cell performance is studied. The overall performance (polarization curve) of the fuel cell drops slightly, but the current density distribution on the anode graphite plate changes greatly due to the grooves. The “current concentration” phenomenon is proposed based on the current density distribution. Through dynamic simulation, the oxygen starvation under current load mode and voltage load mode is simulated, and the “starvation coefficient” is defined as an oxygen starvation diagnostic index. In the current load mode, the “starvation coefficient” never exceed 15%, because when the oxygen starvation is severe, the simulation cannot converge or even cannot maintain, which corresponds to the voltage reversal in reality. However, in the voltage load mode, the “starvation coefficient” can reach up to 100%. The conclusions have important guiding significance for the judgment of the internal reaction uniformity of the segmented fuel cell by grooving method and provide a theoretical basis for judging whether a fuel cell is out of oxygen by segmented fuel cell.     

40SiO2–40P2O5–20ZrO2 sol-gel infiltrated sSEBS membranes with improved methanol crossover and cell performance for direct methanol fuel cell applications

Membranes commonly used in direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) are expensive and show a great permeability to methanol which reduces fuel utilization and leads to mixed potential at the cathode. In this work, sulfonated styrene-ethylene-butylene-styrene (sSEBS) modified membranes with zirconia silica phosphate sol-gel phase are developed and studied in order to evaluate their potential use in DMFC applications. The synthesized hybrid membranes and sSEBS are subjected to an exhaustive physicochemical characterization by liquid uptake, ion exchange capacity, atomic force microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and dynamic mechanical and thermogravimetric analyses. Likewise, the potential use of the prepared membranes in DMFC is evaluated by means of electrochemical characterizations in single cell, determining the limiting methanol crossover current densities, proton conductivities and DMFC performances. The hybrid membranes show lower water and methanol uptakes, higher stiffness, water retention capability, upper power density and lower methanol crossover than sSEBS and Nafion 112.     

Analysis and optimization of high temperature proton exchange membrane (HT-PEM) fuel cell based on surrogate model

The stoichiometric ratio and flow channel geometry play a vital role in the performance of high temperature proton exchange membrane (HT-PEM) fuel cells. Because of the high cost of experiments or simulations, most analyses and optimization of the stoichiometric ratio and flow channel geometry are limited to several points in the entire design domain. In this study, an analysis and optimization method for HT-PEM fuel cells based on the surrogate model was proposed. Surrogate models were constructed using some of the available budgets of samples to analyze and optimize the entire design domain. With this method, it was indicated that the effect of the cathode stoichiometric ratio is more significant to the cell performance than the anode stoichiometric ratio and there are significant nonlinear interactions among the flow channel geometry parameters. At the fixed operating voltage, the flow channel geometry with the maximum current density and that with the maximum real power were obtained. Compared with the base design, the designs obtained by the surrogate model improve the current density and real power by 10.54% and 3.93%, respectively. Thus, this analysis and optimization method is demonstrated to be helpful and deserves attention in future research.     

Eco-friendly fermentation module for maximization of hydrogen harvesting from fatty restaurant waste diluted with grey water

Valorization of fatty restaurant waste (RW) is an economically and environmentally promising approach due to the enriched high biodegradable organic content of this substrate. However, the lipid fraction has an adverse impact on the hydrogen fermentation process. Thus, three staged hybrid reactors (HR1, HR2 and HR3) connected in series were investigated for lipid degradation and H₂ harvesting from the codigestion of fatty RW and grey water. A hydrogen harvesting volume of 0.3 ± 0.02 L/L.d., was recorded in HR1, and lower values of 0.22 ± 0.1 and 0.11 ± 0.06 LH₂/L.d were obtained in HR2 and HR3, respectively. The phyla Actinobacteria (6.4%), Bacteroidetes (10.9%), Chloroflexi (45.1), and Proteobacteria (22.4%), which degrade carbohydrates, lipids and proteins, were dominant in HR1 and highly reduced in HR2 and HR3. Nevertheless, the abundance of the phylum Firmicutes was 16.6% in HR1 and increased to 21.7% in HR3. Staging of the anaerobic digesters highly distributed the hydrolytic and acetogenic syntrophic microbes, creating a unique fermentation medium for H₂ harvesting from RW diluted with grey water.     

Uniformity analysis at MEA and stack Levels for a Nexa PEM fuel cell system

The Nexa™ power module is evaluated at membrane-electrode-assembly (MEA) and stack levels. The I–V Curves of the Nexa™ PEM fuel cell system is measured using periodic current interruption to maintain isothermal stack temperature. The uniformity analysis is mainly performed on the load of 800 W for all MEAs in 10 individual Nexa™ stacks. Statistical data show that the MEA voltage without an external load averages 224 mV higher than that with a load of 800 W. The MEA voltage difference is especially pronounced around the two cells at the air compressor side. The average difference is 8.8% and the highest difference is 13.1% between the minimum MEA voltage in the stack and the mean value. This voltage difference reveals a possibility to increase the product power capability and cut the cost per kilowatts by improving the weak performance electrodes or MEAs in the stack.     

Fast identification of power change rate of PEM fuel cell based on data dimensionality reduction approach

The efficiency, reliability and lifespan of the fuel cell are strongly affected by the dynamic load variation of its output, which renders it desperate to investigate the influence of the power change rate on the fuel cell. In this study, three data dimensionality reduction algorithms are applied to identify the power change rate of the fuel cell in a less time-consuming way. To achieve that, the cell voltages of the stack as high-dimensional dataset is instantly projected onto the one-dimensional eigenvector space by principal component analysis (PCA), Fisher discriminant analysis (FDA) and locally linear embedding (LLE), respectively. The eigenvalue of one-dimensional eigenvector has the potential for instantly identifying the power change rate of the fuel cell and can be used as a feedback parameter in the control, which can improve the dynamic response, reliability, and lifespan of the fuel cell stack. According to the performance indicators of the algorithms including monotonicity, linearity and program execution time, the result shows that the PCA algorithm is the best-matched method for the real-time control of the fuel cell system. In the end, this study discussed some potential applications of this method in the fuel cell system, be it to be used alone or in a vehicular fuel cell hybrid system.     

Cell voltage monitoring All-in-One. A new low cost solution to perform degradation analysis on air-cooled polymer electrolyte fuel cells

In this work, a new low-cost and high-performance system for cells voltage monitoring and degradation studies in air-cooled polymer electrolyte fuel cells has been designed, built and validated in the laboratory under experimental conditions.This system allows monitoring in real time the cells’ voltages, the stack current and temperature in fuel cells made of up to 100 cells. The developed system consists of an acquisition system, which complies with all the recommendations and features necessary to perform degradation tests. It is a scalable configuration with a low number of components and great simplicity. Additionally, the cell voltage monitoring (CVM) system offers high rate of accuracy and high reliability and low cost in comparison with other commercial systems.In the same way, looking for an "All-in-One" solution, the acquisition hardware is accompanied by a software tool based on the "plug and play" philosophy. It allows in a simple way obtaining information from the cells and performing a degradation analysis based on the study of the polarisation curve. The different options and tools included in the CVM system permit, in a very intuitive and graphical way, detecting and quantifying the cell degradation without the need of isolating the stack from the system.Experimental tests carried out on the system validate its performance and show the great applicability of the system in cases where cell faults detection and degradation analysis are required.     

A novel integrated control framework of AFS,ASS, and DYC based on ideal roll angle to improve vehicle stability

The current research on vehicle stability control mainly focuses on following the ideal yaw rate and sideslip angle, without considering the potential of ideal roll angle in improving the vehicle stability. In addition, the mutation of tire-road friction coefficient promotes a great challenge to the stability control. To improve the vehicle stability, in this study, firstly, the three-dimensional stability region of “lateral speed-yaw rate-roll angle” was studied, and a method to determine the ideal roll angle was proposed. Secondly, a novel integrated control framework of AFS, ASS, and DYC based on ideal roll angle was proposed to actively control the front tire slip angles, suspension forces, and motor torques: In the upper-level controller, model predictive control and tire force distribution algorithm were used to obtain the optimal four-tire longitudinal forces, front tire lateral forces and additional roll moment under constraints; In the lower-level controller, the upper virtual target was realized by the optimal allocation algorithm of actuators and the tire slip controller. Finally, the proposed control framework was verified on the varied-µ road. The results indicated that compared with the two existing control strategies, the proposed framework can significantly improve the vehicle following performance and stability.     

An algorithm for estimation of membrane water content in PEM fuel cells

Available humidity sensing techniques are often intrusive, and of limited practical interest for real-time control applications due to their cost, size, and inadequate response time and accuracy. In this study, we present a novel method for estimation of PEM fuel cell humidity by exploiting its effect on cell resistive voltage drop. This voltage loss is discerned from mass transport, concentration, activation losses and open circuit voltage by a well-known fuel cell voltage model. The proposed scheme makes use of measurements of voltage, current, temperature, and total pressure values in the anode and cathode. It also incorporates dynamic estimators for hydrogen and oxygen partial pressures, adapted from [M. Arcak, H. Gorgun, L.M. Pedersen, S. Varigonda, A nonlinear observer design for fuel cell hydrogen estimation, IEEE Trans. Control Syst. Technol. 12 (1) (2004) 101–110]. The membrane resistance thus obtained is then used to estimate membrane water content following functional characterizations presented in [T.E. Springer, T.A. Zawodzinski, S. Gottesfeld, Polymer electrolyte fuel cell model, J. Electrochem. Soc. 138 (8) (1991) 2334–2342]. Experiments with this estimation technique, performed at the Connecticut Global Fuel Cell Center, are presented and discussed.