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

Abstract

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.