Patent ID: 6455180
Filing Date: 2002-09-24
Classification: G01R,H01M,Y02E

Abstract:
In a method of operating a fuel cell apparatus wherein a hydrogen-rich stream is supplied to a stack of fuel cells, wherein the fuel cell stack includes a plurality of first clusters formed of identical number of fuel cells and at least one second cluster formed of a different number of fuel cells, the improvement comprising:measuring the voltage across the entire fuel cell stack; measuring the voltage across the second cluster of fuel cells; and creating a pseudo cluster voltage for the second cluster based on the average cell voltage of all of the cells in the fuel cell stack, the actual voltage across the second cluster and the difference between the number of cells in the first clusters and the number of cells in the second cluster, wherein that the pseudo cluster voltage for the second cluster is compared with the voltage across each first cluster for monitoring of the performance of the fuel cell.