Energy transition and global warming are now terms that are part of our everyday vocabulary. No more energy scientists ignore the objectives of the Horizon 2020 program. Long-term solutions must be proposed in the short and medium term. Thus, we propose in this book to demonstrate that there is a way for hydrogen in the energy mix of the future and more particularly around fuel cells.
Nevertheless, large-scale deployment of the fuel cell will only take place if it is robust enough to ensure continuity of service to the customer. Indeed, the lifetime of the PACs is a central point to be studied upstream, coupled with the development of reliable indicators of their failures. In this context, research on the subject of hybridization, diagnosis and prognosis has been carried out for many years.
The improvement in the lifespan of the PACs is currently a sensitive point, as we only reach about 3 000 hours of operation (with a PEMFC under transport-type transport constraints) whereas it would have to be closer to 5 000 h for A transport application. A PEMFC does not tolerate very fast load variations as the electric motor of a vehicle might require as they lead to premature aging. A first solution to overcome this problem resides in the hybridization of the PAC generator with other sources of energy.
A second solution will ensure the maintenance of the good performances of the PAC throughout its lifetime and the detection of any failing components and the development of diagnostic methods / tools. Indeed, the diagnosis can take place at different levels: Identify, once produced, the origin of a failure to inform the user of its nature and / or detect in real time a drift of normal operating conditions in order to inform the control system to correct drift by acting on its causes in order to predict its duration and its impact on the performance and life of the PAC and / or the system.
Finally, a third solution to drastically increase the lifetime of PACs is the prognosis of PACs. This new scientific and technological axis has emerged in recent years to estimate the duration of operation before a system fails and the risk of the existence or subsequent appearance of one or several modes of failures. Different methods based on data, models or hybridization of the two allow to develop such solutions which display very convincing results for the future of fuel cells in the landscape of the future energy mix.
We propose here to develop these three scientific axes on the basis of recent research coming mainly from the FCLAB federation of research but also from international laboratories.
