Understanding the effects of new designs, components and materials on the performance of industrial-scale electrochemical technologies, under dynamic operating conditions.

The R&D team of a fuel cell development company is looking for ways to characterize membrane hydration of their next-generation fuel cell system, operating at industrial conditions.

The objective is to design fuel cells for heavy duty applications, with enhanced lifetime and cold starting capabilities.

Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) is one of the most powerful techniques to use in development, because of its unique capability to differentiate between membrane and interfacial effects within an electrochemical reaction.

The Pulse Suite performs in-situ characterization of the electrode and electrolyte conditions of the fuel cell system using the principles of Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy, uncovering cell-level health insights while the system is in operation.

To examine fuel cell membrane hydration, the fuel cell stack is connected to the Pulse Probe, which continuously injects a wide range of non-disruptive frequency signals into the running fuel cell system, and measures the system's response back.

To examine individual cell responses within the fuel cell stack, the Pulse Probe is connected to the auxiliary Cell Measurement Unit (CMU), which simultaneously measures the effects of each of the individual cells within the stack, while the fuel cell is running.
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Analyzed data includes exclusive performance indicators of the fuel cell, including real-time visibility into parameters such as:

•Electrolyte Resistance
•Membrane Hydration
•Effective Electrode Dielectric
•Effective Current Density

The Result?

The performance of next-generation products is de-risked, and the product development cycle is optimized for faster commercialization.

Achieving productivity gains for an industrial electrochemical process through predictive maintenance scheduling and meaningful energy efficiencies.

80% of the operating costs of running an electrooxidation water treatment process for a mining operation is spent on maintenance and energy use alone, due to system inefficiencies that lead to energy waste and emergency shutdowns.
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The objective is to reduce the high operating costs of running these industrial electrochemical processes.

Pulsenics' proprietary in-situ characterization and analytical tools uniquely sense and understand changing component conditions of an electrochemical system, while in operation.

The Pulse Suite extracts exclusive performance indicators that reveal the sources of performance inefficiencies affecting the running system, and introduce closed-loop controls that address the effects of these inefficiencies on the system.

Coupled with application-specific deep learning analytics, real-time system insights are produced to inform system and process optimization.

To reduce energy waste, control reference signals are produced to autonomously adjust the electrical profile of the operating system in response to changing electrochemical properties.

Armed with real-time insights on the state of health of the electrochemical system and its components, predictive maintenance scheduling is implemented, reducing emergency shut-down events and improving the longevity of the process.

The Result?

5% in annual cost savings on maintenance.
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13.7% in annual energy use reduction.