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Proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC), which convert the chemical energy into electrical energy directly through electrochemical reactions, are widely considered as one of the best power sources for new energy vehicles (NEV). Some of the major advantages of a PEMFC include high power density, high energy conversion efficiency, minimum pollution, low noise, fast startup and low operating temperature. The Membrane Electrode Assembly (MEA) is one of the core components of fuel cells, which composes catalyst layers (CL) coated proton exchange membrane (PEM) and gas diffusion layers (GDL). The performance of MEA is closely related to mass transportation and the rate of electrochemical reaction. The MEA plays a key role not only in the performance of the PEMFCs, but also for the reducing the cost of the fuel cells, as well as accelerating the commercial applications. Commercialized large-size MEA directly plays a major role in determining fuel cell stack and vehicle performance.

Proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) system is expected to be the next generation vehicle powertrain. However, water management is still the main problem which directly affects the performance, reliability and durability in PEMFC system. To ensure the accurate water content estimation, High Frequency Resistance (HFR) is the most representative indicator in laboratory. The HFR is calculated by detecting the Alternating Current (AC) voltage response of fuel cell under the excitation of 1k Hz AC current. The voltage level of the AC excitation affects the measurement of HFR. Generally, 5mV AC excitation is used to measure HFR for the fuel cell with an output voltage between 0.6-1V. So, online HFR monitor is a big challenge for vehicle application, due to its low Signal/Noise Ratio (S/N), poor Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) environment, high common mode voltage and several hundred cells. In this work, an online fuel cell HFR monitor controller is developed.

Proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) has attracted extensive attention in recent years because of its high efficiency and zero emission. Although fuel cell technology has made great progress, durability is still the bottleneck of its large-scale commercialization. In order to systematically study the degradation of fuel cell system for transportation applications, we selected the most severe operating condition - on-off cyclic condition as the research object, and focused on the influence of cell temperature and air relative humidity on the degradation rate of fuel cell by means of polarization curve, reference voltage and CV. The results show that with the same temperature, the fuel cell performance degradation rate first decreases and then increases with the decrease of humidity, which may be due to the increase of platinum ion transfer rate at high relative humidity and the dry membrane at low relative humidity.

The fuel cell engine is considered to be the ultimate technical direction for the development of vehicle power. The on-board hydrogen supply system is important in fuel cell system. However, the on-board hydrogen supply system is diversified, and the management is mostly integrated in the engine controller. Thus, the fuel cell engine controller is excessive coupled with design of on-board hydrogen supply system. In order to improve the portability and compatibility of the fuel cell engine controller, an independent controller of the on-board hydrogen supply system is designed. Meanwhile, the hardware and software are developed to control 35Mpa gaseous hydrogen storage system. After being tested in a high-pressure environment, the controller can detect temperature, pressure and ambient hydrogen concentration of the hydrogen supply system. Simultaneously, it can drive and control the hydrogen cylinder valve.

This paper is contributed to determining model parameters for DMFCs. Theoretical evaluations are carried out to set up the relationship between the unknown and measurable parameters or variables. A laboratory-scale liquid-feed cell was simulated under different operating conditions. The resulting measurable static performance curves are used as basic information. Some key kinetic and physical parameters can be determined or estimated for a DMFC model.

Fuel cells’ soft output characteristics and mismatched voltage levels with subordinate electrical devices necessitate the use of DC/DC converters, which are an important part of the power electronic subsystem of the fuel cell system. The staggered parallel Boost topology is commonly employed in fuel cell DC/DC converters. This paper focuses on the control characteristics of the two-phase interleaved parallel Boost topology in the context of a fuel cell system. Specifically, we derive the small-signal model and output-control transfer function of the topology, and design a controller based on frequency characteristic analysis. Our proposed controller uses a cascaded double-ring structure and supports both constant current and constant voltage switching modes. To evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed control strategy, we conduct simulation and prototype testing.

Proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) system is considered to be one of the ideal replacement for conventional Internal Combustion Engines (ICE) due to its zero emission, low operating temperature and high power density. The high-pressure PEMFC system has become the future development direction because the higher gas pressure can effectively improve the performance and power density of stack. However, the high gas pressure can lead to the damage of membrane electrode assembly (MEA) and even the failure of fuel cell stack. As the air supply system is a nonlinear system, the flow and pressure have a strong coupling relation. For this problem, firstly, the mathematical model of air supply system is established in MATLAB/Simulink. Then a dual-loop control strategy is used in controller.