INVESTIGATING LIFE-TIME LIMITATIONS

MORELife will demonstrate improvements of materials and operating strategies to enhance the durability and reliability of fuel cell stacks for heavy duty truck application. The project will reach ambitious goals of power density > 1.2 W/cm² at 0.675 V/cell and PGM loading ≤0.3 g/kW, while achieving system durability of 30,000 h of operation with <10 % performance loss. 
Degradation issues based on real life application data will be identified. With this, both highly specific accelerated stress tests (ASTs) for the shortened test duration for lifetime verification as well as advanced degradation models will be developed. Thereby, the needed improvements on the material and operation strategy level will be defined. Improved materials will be evaluated on different levels by the partners. Starting on a small scale single cell level and moving up to the full commercial scale short stack level, the project aims to establish a firm mechanistic understanding at the smaller single cell scale that is then successfully understood, evaluated, and proven at the commercial short stack level using both accelerated degradation methods and HD-application relevant environments. After validation of the operating conditions based on the improved materials the results will be fed back into the models to validate the improvements compared to state of-the-art materials and prove a predicted lifetime of 30,000h.