Review on system mitigation strategies for start-stop degradation of automotive proton exchange membrane fuel cell

Proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is considered as a very promising power conversion device for automobiles. Despite many significant technological and fundamental advances having been made in the past decades, obstacles limiting the commercialization of automotive PEMFCs remain in the aspect of lifespan, which is mainly affected by several aspects such as various operating conditions. Especially, the start-stop process is an inevitable and frequent operating condition for automotive PEMFCs, which makes it of great significance to mitigate the PEMFC performance degradation under an operating condition. Based on the analysis of the PEMFC degradation mechanism during the start-stop process, three main entry points for the current start-stop decay mitigation strategies are summarized: disrupting the conditions for carbon carrier corrosion, reducing the existence time of hydrogen-air boundary inside the anode, and limiting the potential of the cathode catalyst layer. This paper presents a comprehensive review of control strategies to mitigate PEMFC start-stop performance degradation from three system management perspectives: operating parameter optimization, gas purging, and application of dummy loads. Furthermore, research interests in further optimizing mitigation strategies for PEMFC start-stop degradation are suggested. This review seeks to guide further investigation into improving PEMFC durability.