Predicting the Performance of PEM Fuel Cells by Determining Dehydration or Flooding in the Cell Using Machine Learning Models

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Abstract
Modern industries encourages the use of hydrogen as an energy carrier to decarbonize the electricity grid, Polymeric Electrolyte membrane fuel cell which uses hydrogen as a fuel to produce electricity, is an efficient and reliable ‘power to gas’ technology. However, a key issue obstructing the advancement of PEMFCs is the unpredictability of their performance and failure events caused by flooding and dehydration. The accurate prediction of these two events is required to avoid any catastrophic failure in the cell. A typical approach used to predict failure modes relies on modeling failure-induced performance losses and monitoring the voltage of a cell. Data-driven machine learning models must be developed to address these challenges. Herein, we present a machine learning model for the prediction of the failure modes of operating cells. The model predicted the relative humidity of a cell by considering the cell voltage and current density as the input parameters. Advanced regression techniques, such as support vector machine, decision tree regression, random forest regression and artificial neural network, were used to improve the predictions. Features related to the model were derived from cell polarization data. The model’s results were validated with real-time test data obtained from the cell. The statistical machine learning models accurately provided information on the flooding- and dehydration-induced failure events.

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