Characteristic Analysis of Fuel Cell Decay Based on Actual Vehicle Operating Conditions

To achieve commercial promotion for fuel cell vehicles, voltage degradation needs to be alleviated because it would reduce the lifetime of fuel cell stack and system. Different parameters in actual vehicle operating environment will influence the durability of fuel cell system, like vehicle vibration and air quality. But the durability test in actual vehicle road conditions is time-consuming and laborious. In addition, environmental fluctuations will influence the accuracy of test results. In this paper, a characteristic analysis on fuel cell performance degradation is performed based on the fragmented data from actual operating conditions. The daily current and voltage were divided from the total dataset. According to the semi-empirical formula of the fuel cell, the polarization curve is fitted based on the daily data. Finally, the voltage degradation rate is calculated and the degradation feature under real traffic condition is also analyzed. According to the data of 450h from the actual vehicle operating condition, the predicted lifetime is about 5000h. Based on this predicted lifetime, corresponding optimization of control strategy in PEMFC system will be conducted to reduce the voltage degradation and improve fuel cell durability.