As PEM fuel cells get used in more transport vehicles like buses, cars, and light rail vehicles, it becomes increasingly important to predict failures using in situ diagnostics.
Hydrogen is projected to be a $10T (that’s trillion with a “T”) market by 2050, or 13% of the global GDP,[1] and hydrogen fuel cells have seen a surge in growth over the past few years as more of the world begins to look seriously at zero carbon solutions for transportation. Hydrogen-powered vehicles open up new markets around hydrolyzers/electrolyzers where the hydrogen is actually generated at a fueling station rather than trucking it long distances as we do with petrol today. At the heart of most electrolyzers that produce hydrogen, or fuel cells that use hydrogen to produce electricity, is a proton-exchange membrane (PEM), as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. PEM fuel cell.[2]
The…
Designing a portable system for in situ failure prediction in fuel cells
