Experiments of a 20 cell PEFC operating under fault conditions with diode by-pass circuit for uninterrupted power delivery

The work presents the results of experiments related to the electrical and dynamical behaviour of a 500 W, 20 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.