The explosion in a proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) powered forklift in Louisiana, USA in May 2018 and the resulting fatality highlights the need for the improved safety of this technology. Apart from the safety concerns, PEMFC durability has been an important issue towards its further commercialization. Both the safety and durability concerns associated with this technology can be attributed to the temporal degradation of its components. In this study, we have developed a mathematical model that relates the microscale PEMFC degradation to the probability of a macroscale explosion in a Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle (FCEV). Using the model and the inherent safety principle of intensification, it was observed that increasing the operating temperature of the PEMFC system can significantly improve both its safety and durability while intensifying membrane design parameters i.e. membrane thickness and membrane conductivity do not provide any significant improvements. A key inference from this study is that the durability (expressed in voltage loss) and safety (expressed in explosion probability) of a PEMFC system are not perfectly correlated.

2018年5月，在美国路易斯安那州由质子交换膜燃料电池（PEMFC）驱动的叉车发生爆炸，并导致死亡，这突出表明需要提高这项技术的安全性。除了安全方面的考虑，PEMFC的耐久性一直是其进一步商业化的重要问题。与该技术相关的安全性和耐用性问题都可以归因于其组件的时间退化。在这项研究中，我们开发了一个数学模型，该模型将微型PEMFC的退化与燃料电池电动汽车（FCEV）发生大规模爆炸的可能性相关联。使用模型和强化的固有安全原理，观察到，提高PEMFC系统的工作温度可以显着改善其安全性和耐用性，同时加强膜设计参数（即膜厚度和膜电导率）没有任何显着改善。这项研究的一个主要推论是，PEMFC系统的耐久性（以电压损失表示）和安全性（以爆炸概率表示）并不是完全相关的。