The reduction of greenhouse gas and pollutant emissions is a major issue in modern society. Therefore, environmentally friendly technologies like fuel cells should replace conventional energy generation plants. Today, fuel cells are used in households for CHP (combined heat and power) applications, for emergency power supply in many stationary applications and for the power supply of cars, buses and ships and emergency power supply of aircrafts. A significant challenge is the optimal electrical grid integration and selection of the appropriate grid protection mechanism for fuel cell applications. For this, the short circuit capability and behavior needs to be known. This paper gives a mathematical estimation of the short circuit behavior of fuel cells. Five main transient and dynamic phenomena are investigated. The impact of the main transient effect for the provision of additional short circuit energy is simulated, and the simulation is experimentally validated. For this purpose, a 25 $\mathrm{c}$ $\mathrm{m}$ ${}^2$ single cell consisting of a Nafion^TM 212 membrane and carbon cloth electrodes with a catalyst loading of $0.5$ $\mathrm{m}$ $\mathrm{g}$ / $\mathrm{c}$ $\mathrm{m}$ ${}^2$ Pt is analyzed. The magnitude of the transient short circuit current depends on the operating point right before the short circuit occurs, whereas the stationary short circuit current of fuel cells is invariably about twice the operational current. Based on these results, a novel fuel cell model for the estimation of the short circuit behavior is proposed.

With increasing interest in clean energy generation in the transportation sector, increasing attention has been given to polymer-electrolyte-membrane fuel cells as viable power sources. One issue, the widespread application of this technology faces, is the insufficient knowledge regarding the transient behaviour of fuel cells, for instance, following a short-circuit event. In this paper, an agglomerate model is presented and validated, which enables the transient simulation of short-circuit events to predict the resulting peak current and discharge of the double layer capacity. The model allows for the incorporation of detailed morphological and compositional information regarding all fuel cell components. This information is used to calculate the reaction rate, diffusional and convectional species transfer, and the momentum transport. It can be shown that the charge in the double layer capacitance of the fuel cell is key to predicting the peak current and its charge is dependent on the operating conditions of the fuel cell. Further, the effects of the magnitude of the double layer capacity, current rise time and stoichiometry on the dynamic behaviour of the fuel cell are investigated. It can be shown that the discharge of the double layer capacity proceeds from the membrane through the catalyst layer to the gas diffusion layer and that the stoichiometry of the gas supply does not significantly change the absolute peak value of the short-circuit current.

The aviation industry pursues the integration of fuel cells to reduce pollutant emissions. Their connection to the on-board power supply leads to new requirements for electrical grid protection. The limited short-circuit current of a weight-optimized fuel cell system cannot trip a standard fuse. Hence, in this article, a new protection device is developed as an under/over voltage primary protection. The proposed device consists of three basic elements: relay, differential amplifier, current source. This article includes a detailed description of the protections design process, that includes a requirement analysis, a detailed robustness consideration, and an experimental validation of a developed prototype.