Emerging technologies in prognostics for fuel cells including direct hydrocarbon fuel cells.

Fuel cells have been regarded as promising power sources for cleaner energy production. Despite their high theoretical efficiency, fuel cells are still challenged with their durability issues that hinder their full commercialization. Recent work on fuel cells' prognostics provided multiple opportunities for predicting and monitoring the fuel cells' durability. Prognostic studies evaluate, predict and model complex fuel cell systems. This field witnessed an increase in application, accuracy, and depth recently. The application of several prognostic studies to predict the failure modes helped to improve the efficiency and estimate the remaining useful life (RUL) of the complex fuel cell system. This paper discusses the most recent prognostic and health monitoring studies of fuel cells systems that use hydrogen or hydrocarbon fuels. It suggests that prognostics are promising approaches toward evaluating the fuel cell system's useful life. The paper also provides an overview of the most recent developments in the types of the applied prognostic models. It appears that the main challenge is the development of online prognostic methods for the dynamic fuel cell systems. This work concludes that a proper prediction/monitoring approach requires the application of more than one prognostic method. • The application of fuel cells is usually limited by their low lifespan and durability. • Prognostics offer a promising approach for predicting the failure modes in fuel cells. • Prognostic models are classified into model-free methods or model-based methods. • More than one model is required to properly evaluate the fuel cells failure modes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]