Electrical test methods for on-line fuel cell ohmic resistance measurement

The principles and trade-offs of four electrical test methods suitable for on-line measurement of the ohmic resistance (R_Ω) of fuel cells is presented: current interrupt, AC resistance, high frequency resistance (HFR), and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). The internal resistance of a proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell determined with the current interrupt, HFR and EIS techniques is compared. The influence of the AC amplitude and frequency of the HFR measurement on the observed ohmic resistance is examined, as is the ohmic resistance extracted from the EIS data by modeling the spectra with a transmission line model for porous electrodes. The ohmic resistance of a H₂/O₂ PEM fuel cell determined via the three methods was within 10–30% of each other. The current interrupt technique consistently produced measured cell resistances that exceeded those of the other two techniques. For the HFR technique, the frequency at which the measurement was conducted influenced the measured resistance (i.e., higher frequency providing smaller R_Ω), whereas the AC amplitude did not effect the observed value. The difference in measured ohmic resistance between these techniques exceeds that reasonably accounted for by measurement error. The source of the discrepancy between current interrupt and impedance-based methods is attributed to the difference in the response of a non-uniformly polarized electrode, such as a porous electrode with non-negligible ohmic resistance, to a large perturbation (current interrupt event) as compared to a small perturbation (impedance measurement).