Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy of proton exchange membrane fuel cell stacks

• Main Author: Hetzer, Brian J
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Subjects: energy; engineering, electronics and electrical; engineering, mechanical
• ISBN: 9780496172818; 0496172816

Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) is applied to a small, four cell Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) fuel cell stack to examine the stack response as the load current changes. The measured stack response is compared to a simulated response generated by a stack model that has been developed using MATLAB. The results show that the model predicted well the behavior of the VI curve for currents less than 50 Amps. The model also qualitatively predicted the impedance response as a function of current and frequency. Because of apparent model incompleteness, it was not able to predict accurately the shape of the response in the complex plane at currents larger than 20 Amps and did not match the change in ohmic resistance with current.