Failure Mode and Effect Analysis, and Fault Tree Analysis of Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells

Abstract

Hydrogen fuel cells have the potential to dramatically reduce emissions from the energy sector, particularly when integrated into an automotive application. However there are three main hurdles to the commercialisation of this promising technology; one of which is reliability. Current standards require an automotive fuel cell to last around 5000 hours of operation (equivalent to around 150,000 miles), which has proven difficult to achieve to date. This hurdle can be overcome through in-depth reliability analysis including techniques such as Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) and Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) amongst others. Research has found that the reliability field regarding hydrogen fuel cells is still in its infancy, and needs development, if the current standards are to be achieved. In this work, a detailed reliability study of a Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) is undertaken. The results of which are a qualitative and quantitative analysis of a PEMFC. The FMEA and FTA are the most up to date assessments of failure in fuel cells made using a comprehensive literature review and expert opinion.

Reliability of liquid organic hydrogen carrier‐based energy storage in a mobility application

“…This can be attributed to a sharp increase in the number of auxiliary components and connections, which can all fail, overcompensating the positive effect of the additional FC redundancy. An optimal system design comprising of two FCs is consequently concluded (for the optimization of the fuel cell itself regarding reliability and details on their different failure modes, the respective works by Whiteley et al, Collong et al, Gerbec et al, and Placca et al are recommended).…”

“…Through reliability analysis, the frequency of different accident scenarios of pressurized H 2 storages, the safety of hydrogen filling stations, and the reliability of hybrid renewable energies were analyzed . FMEA and FTA are used in the field of FCs mainly to determine the degradation in voltage per hour . In addition, fault trees are used to evaluate FC safety, reliability, availability, and maintainability …”

A Reliability-Based Strategy for the Analysis of Single Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells

“…These values show that, in order to achieve the proposed objectives, future developments are necessary [8]. In addition, current knowledge on the reliability of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) is still in the early stages of [9]. It should be noted that studies on reliability techniques applied to PEMFC systems are limited in the literature and analysis strategies may vary depending on the operating conditions of the device, such as those discussed in this work [10].…”

Reliability modelling of PEM fuel cells with hybrid Petri nets

“…The authors determined minimal cut sets, but provided no quantitative results due to the lack of reliability data. Another fault tree analysis carried out by (Whiteley, Dunnett, et al 2015) shows that the Boolean logic of fault trees is not ideal method for estimating the probability of fuel cell failure due to complex dependencies of failure modes on the operating conditions. Authors highlight that a different FT needs to be constructed for all possible operating conditions, what is not realistic.…”