Development of converter based electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, modeling and data processing tools for fuel cell stack diagnostics and servicing

Heavy-duty fuel cell vehicles as a clean energy transportation solution have attracted much interest over the last few years. However, they still suffer from various degradation and faults and a relatively short lifetime, hindering their wider market adoption. Better diagnostics tools are highly needed to obtain information from the fuel cell stacks of the industrial partner, Ballard Power Systems. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) has been established as an important technique for fuel cell diagnostics. Linear power amplifiers were used previously as an excitation source for EIS with limited power rating and efficiency, restricting their applications to only single cell or short stack testing. This project therefore aims to develop a converter based EIS tool with higher power capability for Ballard’s fuel cell diagnosis at the stack level. It also aims to develop new models and data processing techniques to augment and generate EIS data for hydrogen leak predictions.

Faculty Supervisor:

Jiacheng Jason Wang;Krishna Vijayaraghavan

Student:

Partner:

Ballard Power Systems Inc

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Manufacturing; Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

Simon Fraser University

Program: