Low-temperature fuel cells with a proton exchange membrane (PEMFC) are one of the more promising technologies for achieving zero poisonous emissions of heavier road vehicles on long distance travel. Even though the progress in the field of life expectancy, performance and efficiency of PEMFC is undisputible, the inevitable degradation of individual components, that are unequivocally connected with unavoidable operational regimes, like startups and shutdowns, when the fuel cells works locally in an electrolysis regime, still present a great challenge that needs to be addressed. In this paper, we focused on analysing the situation at fuel cell startup, that directly affect performance and longevity characteristics of fuel cell components. Based on experimental data in which the fuel cell is separated into twenty segments, we parametrised our electrochemical model and simulated a startup. The model exhibits great predictability, confirmed with a high level of correlation with experimental data with R2 values for individual segments raging between 0,8883 and 0,9995 with an average value of 0,9780.
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