Investigation on “saw-tooth” behavior of PEM fuel cell performance during shutdown and restart cycles

It was sometimes observed that the performance of a proton-exchange membrane fuel cell improved after the cell went through shutdown and restart cycles. Such a performance recovery led to a “saw-tooth” performance pattern when multiple shutdowns and restarts occurred during the endurance test of a fuel cell. The shutdowns included both planned shutdowns and unintended ones due to station trips or emergency stops (E-stops). The length of the shutdown periods ranged from a few minutes to several weeks. Although such a “saw-tooth” behavior could be attributed to multiple reasons such as: (1) catalyst surface oxidation state change; (2) catalyst surface cleansing; or (3) water management, we found that it was mainly related to water management in our cases after a systematic investigation employing both single cells and stacks.