Review—Subzero Automotive Fuel Cells: Water Fill Tests vs Cold-Starts

Abstract

Subzero cold-starts are one of the last remaining challenges to the commercialization of automotive fuel cells. The ultimate cold-start target is to exothermically self-start a fuel cell stack from −20 °C to attain 50% rated power within 30 s, expending only 5 MJ of start-up/shutdown power—currently unattainable with today’s materials, thus exacerbating the performance gap of future advanced materials. There exists a disconnect between published subzero isothermal water fill test results and industrially relevant cold-starts. For an isothermal water fill test in a single cell at −20 °C, the highest water fill capacity (7.8 m g H 2 O c m − 2 in 2100 s) was observed for the lowest applied galvanostatic load of 10 mA cm−2 with the lowest initial water content (λ initial = 2.2). Conversely, the fastest time to 0 °C for a 36-cell stack from −20 °C was 54 s under an adaptive applied galvanostatic/potentiostatic load, due to adjacent cell heating accelerating the overall stack’s thermal rise. A higher λ initial of 6.2 or greater enhances the cold-start performance and thermal response of a stack. For unassisted cold-starts, both convective mass/heat flux are necessary to avoid accumulation of ice and to overcome the thermal mass of the endplates of a stack with 20-cells or more.