Experiments of a twenty cell PEFC operating under fault conditions with diode by-pass circuit for uninterrupted power delivery

A. de Bernardinis (1) , Denis Candusso (1, 2) , Fabien Harel (1, 2) , Gérard Coquery (1) , X. Francois (2)

1 INRETS/LTN - Laboratoire des Technologies Nouvelles
2 FC LAB - Laboratoire commun de recherche

The work presents the results of experiments related to the electrical and dynamical behaviour of a 500W, twenty cell Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cell (PEFC) stack operated under fault condition and connected to an anti-parallel diode acting as a by-pass. The stack is placed in an experimental set-up that reproduces the electrical coupling in series of two fuel cells. The results allow the evaluation of the by-pass diode solution in the case of specific degraded working modes such as the break of the gas reactant feeding. The experiments presented in this article constitute an extrapolation and a complementary investigation of the preliminary results already achieved on a two cell PEFC stack and which had demonstrated the capability of the reverse diode to electrically isolate a fuel cell stack under fault. The proposed experiments focus on the dynamic behaviour of the stack under degraded working modes and point out the key-role of the fuel cell stack impedance in the triggering of the anti-parallel diode switching.

Mots clés: ELECTRICITE; GENERATEUR; POLYMERE

Domaines: Thermique [physics.class-ph]; Thermique [physics.class-ph]; Energie électrique

A. de Bernardinis, Denis Candusso, Fabien Harel, Gérard Coquery, X. Francois. Experiments of a twenty cell PEFC operating under fault conditions with diode by-pass circuit for uninterrupted power delivery. Energy Conversion and Management, 2010, vol.51 (n.5), pp1044-54. ⟨10.1016/j.enconman.2009.12.008⟩. ⟨hal-00559434⟩