Health state monitoring and predicting of proton exchange membrane fuel cells: A review

Abstract

Proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is characterized by environmental protection and energy saving, clean and pollution-free, which is consistent with the development background of the current era. At present, it has become the development direction of many countries. The short lifetime and poor durability of PEMFC are the main problems restricting their application and industrial development. Especially in the transportation field, there is still a big gap between PEMFC and internal combustion engine in terms of lifetime. State of health (SOH) monitoring and prediction is an important approach to improve the durability and reliability of PEMFCs. By analyzing the mechanism of fuel cell degradation, extracting the parameters that characterize the degradation process and monitoring them in real time can realize the SOH prediction of PEMFC, which can effectively avoid the damage and loss of life of the fuel cell. The improvement of the accuracy of SOH monitoring under dynamic operating conditions and the exploration of more efficient and comprehensive prediction models and methods are key challenges in SOH monitoring and prediction of PEMFC systems. This paper mainly summarizes the different monitoring and prediction methods applied in PEMFCs, and explores the strategies for evaluating the prediction results.