A Microcontroller-Based System for the Monitoring of a Fuel Cell Stack

This paper describes the development of a monitoring and managing system for a PEM fuel-cell (FC) stack. This is a stand-alone unit that embodies two microcontrollers, hardware and sensing circuits, an LCD and a numeric pad. The proposed system acquires the most important gas parameters: mass flow rate, pressure and temperature. The output current and voltage are also acquired. The system design complies with the requirements of a portable FC based application. Additionally, results obtained during the experimental test are presented