This paper presents a new method of fault detection and isolation (FDI) for polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell (FC) dynamic systems under an open-loop scheme. This method uses a radial basis function (RBF) neural network to perform fault identification, classification and isolation. The novelty is that the RBF model of independent mode is used to predict the future outputs of the FC s...

A fiber optic coupled diode laser sensor has been constructed for in situ measurements of water vapor partial pressure in active proton-exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell systems. The bipolar plate of a prototypical PEM fuel cell was modified to allow for transmission of a near infrared laser beam through the flow channels on either the fuel or oxidizer side of its membrane-electrode assembly. T...

1.1 Background Thanks to the breakthroughs in microfabrication technologies, numerous concepts of microsystems including micro aerial vehicles, microbots, and nanosatellites have been proposed. Contrary to ordinary electronic devices, these microsystems perform mechanical work and require the extended operation. As their functions are getting complex and advanced, their energy consumption is al...

An essential requirement for an operating PEM fuel cell is providing proper water content in the membrane. To avoid water flooding an appropriate water balance is required. Here, an analytic model of a planar membrane humidifier for PEM fuel cell is proposed where the effect of dimensional parameters includes membrane thickness, membrane area and channel hydraulic diameter are investigated. A N...

Thesis director: Prof. Pascal Briois tel: +33 3 84 58 37 01 E-mail: [email protected] Thesis co-supervisor: Dr. Fei Gao tel: +33 3 84 58 38 01 E-mail: [email protected] CONTEXT: The fuel cell is seen as a potential energy conversion system in the future energy mix. Among the various types of fuel cells, proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) has shown great interest in its use in stationa...

Polymer electrolyte membranes (PEM) and Pt-based catalysts are two crucial components which determine the properties and price of fuel cells. Even though, PEM faces problem of fuel crossover in liquid fuel cells such as direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) and direct borohydride fuel cell (DBFC), which lowers power output greatly. Here, we report a DBFC in which a polymer fiber membrane (PFM) was u...

Usually, modelling of fuel cell systems uses complex expressions, based on the knowledge of physicalchemical phenomena. These models require a good knowledge of the parameters involved in the processes that, in many cases, are difficult to determine. A solution to avoid this difficulty consists in using black-box models, such as those based on artificial neural networks (ANN). This paper presen...

Fig. 1: Power electronics system driving ac load, powered by a fuel cell. Abstract—A dynamic model of a PEM fuel cell is developed for power electronics simulation. The model accounts for static losses of activation, ohmic, and concentration regions, and dynamic transients due to charge double layer and compressor delay. In this paper, study was given to additional factors, including temperatur...

Oxygen transport across the cathode gas diffusion layer (GDL) in polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells was examined by varying the O2/N2 ratio and by varying the area of the GDL extending laterally from the gas flow channel under the bipolar plate (under the land). As the cathode is depleted of oxygen, the current density becomes limited by oxygen transport across the GDL. Oxygen deplet...

In order to present a new and high performance structure of PEM fuel cell and study the influence of the flow direction and distribution on the rate of reactants diffusion, three novel models of vertical reactant flow injection into the anode and cathode reaction area field have been introduced. They consist of one inlet and two inlets and also a continuous channel. The governing equations on t...