Paving the Way for Standards for Fuel Cells

Motivation. Fuel cells have the potential to replace many current energy systems and offer significant energy, environmental and economic benefits compared to several other competing energy conversion technologies currently in use today. Intensive development efforts are being made throughout the world to improve the viability of the technology. As a result, fuel cells have become the leading technology for hydrogen utilisation as an energy carrier over the past ten years. However, fuel cell technologies are not yet mature enough for a broad range of end user applications and need to be further developed as there are significant technological challenges to be addressed. Today there is a tendency for diverse test methods and protocols to be used in the fuel cell community. On the other hand, given that fuel cell developments are underway worldwide, there is a critical need for common agreed methods to measure and assess their power output, efficiency, dynamic behaviour and durability. In order to make comparisons between the various kinds of fuel cells and the results obtained under a tremendous variety of boundary conditions and operation regimes, it is important to have testing procedures, test protocols and measurement methodologies harmonised. The harmonisation of testing procedures, the ultimate goal of the Fuel Cell Testing, Safety & Quality Assurance (FCTESQA) Specific Targeted Research Project (STREP), contributes to the early and market-oriented development of specifications and pre-standards. Eventually, the experimentally validated and benchmarked procedures will be cast into international standards.

TSOTRIDIS Georgios; 

2010-05-18

British Publishers

JRC57658

2040-7335,   

http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/d94da72f#/d94da72f/1,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC57658,