A review of accelerated stress tests dedicated to proton exchange membrane fuel cells – Part I: Fuel cell component level

Various research are currently done about fuel cells. They can concern the application context, the fuel cell technology by itself or the socio-economic bolts. This paper deals with fuel cells stack testing and especially the accelerated stress testing. Long and expensive ageing tests are performed to study the behavior of the fuel cell with the aim of making it as robust as possible versus permanent degradation over time. Accelerated stress tests should provide results faster as classical ageing tests, thus inducing cost reduction. This paper reviews fuel cell component degradation, including degradation mechanisms, and the accelerated stress tests dedicated to all the constituting components (catalyst layer, membrane, gas diffusion layer and bipolar plates). Obviously, the harmonized accelerated stress tests given by the Department of Energy (DoE) are presented but all other recent accelerated test protocols proposed in the literature are also reviewed. In addition, several tables are given to detail operating conditions, specimen, characterization planning and a degradation rate that will be relevant and helpful to converge with an optimal AST solution. • Degradation mechanisms on polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells are explained. • Harmonized or not accelerated stress test protocols at component level are reviewed. • A recent state of the art on durability key issues is provided.