Performance prediction of fuel cells using long short-term memory recurrent neural network

Performance prediction of proton-exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) under dynamic conditions, especially for vehicle applications, is increasingly become the focus of attention. This article proposes a performance prediction method of PEMFC using long short-term memory (LSTM) recurrent neural network (RNN). In this article, polarization curve (current-voltage curve) and voltage degradation curve (current-time curve) are adopted as the main performance indexes of PEMFC. Both polarization curve prediction and performance degradation prediction of PEMFC can be effectively implemented based on the LSTM method. To investigate the voltage losses law of experimental and predicted results, the paper introduces an empirical equation of polarization curve. The perfect match between the experimental and predicted polarization losses of PEMFC can further validate the prediction performance of LSTM method. The proposed prediction method is validated by the PEMFC polarization curve data obtained from the designed aging experiment of a 4 kW stack operated under dynamic loading cycling situation during 600 hours. Then, LSTM network is compared with traditional RNN and back-propagation neural network (BPNN) to prove its superiority. The minimum values of root-mean-square error (RMSE) and the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of LSTM network with different training data are 0.0088 and 0.0101, respectively. All the coefficient of determination (R-2) of LSTM model with different training data is over 0.95, which is close to 1.0. The prediction accuracy of LSTM network is higher than that of two other networks. The result indicates that LSTM network outperforms two other networks in PEMFC performance prediction. Hence, the prediction method based on LSTM network is very suitable for PEMFC performance prediction.