Remaining Useful Life Prediction Method of PEM Fuel Cells Based on a Hybrid Model

To predict the remaining useful life (RUL) of the proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) in advance, a prediction method based on the voltage recovery model and Bayesian optimization of a multi-kernel relevance vector machine (MK-RVM) is proposed in this paper. First, the empirical mode decomposition (EMD) method was used to preprocess the data, and then MK-RVM was used to train the model. Next, the Bayesian optimization algorithm was used to optimize the weight coefficient of the kernel function to complete the parameter update of the prediction model, and the voltage recovery model was added to the prediction model to realize the rapid and accurate prediction of the RUL of PEMFC. Finally, the method proposed in this paper was applied to the open data set of PEMFC provided by Fuel Cell Laboratory (FCLAB), and the prediction accuracy of RUL for PEMFC was obtained by 95.35%, indicating that this method had good generalization ability and verified the accuracy of the method when predicting the RUL of PEMFC. The realization of long-term projections for PEMFC RUL not only improves the useful life, reliability, and safety of PEMFC but also reduces operating costs and downtime.