A review on lifetime prediction of proton exchange membrane fuel cells system

The proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC) system is a promising eco-friendly power converter device in a wide range of applications, especially in the transportation area. Insufficient service life is one of the key issues that hinder its large-scale commercial application. Degradations of the materials, suboptimal operating procedures, and disturbances from the external environment and load all would have a terrible impact on the durability performance of PEMFC. Prognostic and health management (PHM) can estimate the remaining useful life (RUL) in advance and make the proper decisions at the right time to extend the service life of the system by condition-based maintenance. At the very least, the PHM can provide degradation information and reserve enough maintenance time for the operators to avoid some fatal damages. Analyzing the working principles and the degradation phenomena of the PEMFC system are the foundations of degradation prediction. Developing accurate and dynamic models to describe the degradation mechanisms, exploring accurate, efficient, and robust methods to realize the RUL prediction are some critical challenges of PHM nowadays, especially under dynamic operating conditions. This paper focuses on comparing different models for degradation mechanisms, discussing some key issues of PHM, and reviewing the degradation prediction methods. • Lifetime prediction challenges of the PEMFC system are presented. • Degradation mechanisms and models of the PEMFC system are discussed. • Existing lifetime prediction methods of the PEMFC system are compared.