The polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell has been widely studied in many fields and is being commercialized through various applications such as automobiles or distributed power generation. However, there are some fuel-cell operation stability and durability issues yet to be solved. One such problem is how to monitor the hydration condition within a fuel cell quickly and precisely for fault detection during operation. This study presents a method for monitoring the water management status in the fuel cell on-line. The relationship between equivalent circuit elements, voltage and current is described mathematically, and based on this equation, the equivalent circuit elements are estimated on-line through the voltage and current values measured in the experiment. The experiment is performed in three pre-defined states: normal, dry-out, and flooding. The parameter values of the equivalent circuit estimated by the least square method show different behaviors for each state, and it is confirmed that it is possible to implement fault isolation related to water management of a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell through parameter estimation, showing different behaviors in each state.

聚合物电解质膜燃料电池已经在许多领域中被广泛研究，并且通过诸如汽车或分布式发电的各种应用而商业化。但是，仍有一些燃料电池的运行稳定性和耐用性问题尚待解决。这样的问题之一是如何快速且精确地监视燃料电池内的水合作用状况以在操作期间进行故障检测。这项研究提出了一种在线监测燃料电池中水管理状态的方法。用数学方法描述了等效电路元件，电压和电流之间的关系，并基于此方程式，通过实验中测量的电压和电流值在线估算了等效电路元件。实验以三种预定状态进行：正常，变干，和洪水。通过最小二乘法估计的等效电路的参数值在每种状态下均表现出不同的行为，并且可以证实通过参数估计可以实现与高分子电解质膜燃料电池的水管理有关的故障隔离，从而表现出不同的行为在每个州。