Experimental investigation on the voltage uniformity for a PEMFC stack with different dynamic loading strategies

Abstract

The operating life of the proton exchange membrane fuel cell stack is mainly decided by performances of its weakest single cell because of the “Buckets effect”, thus high voltage uniformity during a dynamic loading process is key to the stack durability. In this work, a 3-kW stack is examined experimentally on its voltage uniformity (voltage coefficient variation (Cv)) under conditions of loading from open-circuit state (0 A) to nominal current (165 A) and stack temperatures of 30 °C, 45 °C and 65 °C. Different dynamic loading strategies, namely constant loading rate strategy, decreasing loading rate strategy, and increasing loading rate (square/cube increasing loading rate) strategy, are examined and compared. Results display that during the loading process, (a) the voltage uniformity rises abruptly and goes down quickly when the loading current is small (e.g. from 0 A to 22 A), (b) the voltage uniformity under a small loading current is better than that under the open-circuit state, and (c) voltage uniformity decreases as the loading current increases from a small value to the nominal current. Comparisons of different current loading strategies show that as the stack temperature rises from 30 °C to 65 °C, the stack Cv value under the open-circuit state increases from 1.12 to 1.84 and decreases from 3.85 to 2.45 in the nominal current state. The maximum Cv for the decreasing loading rate strategy decreases from 16.25 to 9.49 and that of the constant loading rate strategy also decreases from 5.85 to 4.96. Cv values of the square current increasing loading rate strategy keep below 3.85 under conditions of the three stack temperatures and display a slight fluctuation during the whole current loading process, which indicates that the strategy can effectively make the stack being of an excellent voltage uniformity during the instantaneous response process.