The design of long-life, high-efficiency PEM fuel cell power supplies for low power sensor networks

Field sensor networks have important applications in environmental monitoring, wildlife preservation, in disaster monitoring and in border security. The reduced cost of electronics, sensors and actuators make it possible to deploy hundreds if not thousands of these sensor modules. However, power technology has not kept pace. Current power supply technologies such as batteries limit many applications due to their low specific energy. Photovoltaics typically requires large bulky panels and is dependent on varying solar insolation and therefore requires backup power sources. Polymer Electrolyte Membrane (PEM) fuel cells are a promising alternative, because they are clean, quiet and operate at high efficiencies. However, challenges remain in achieving long lives due to factors such as degradation and hydrogen storage. In this work, we devise a framework for designing fuel cells power supplies for field sensor networks. This design framework utilize lithium hydride hydrogen storage technology that offers high energy density of up to 5000 Wh/kg. Using this design framework, we identify operating conditions to maximize the life of the power supply, meet the required power output and minimize fuel consumption. We devise a series of controllers to achieve this capability and demonstrate it using a bench-top experiment that operated for 5000 h. The laboratory experiments point towards a pathway to demonstrate these fuel cell power supplies in the field. Our studies show that the proposed PEM fuel cell hybrid system fueled using lithium hydride offers at least a 3 fold reduction in mass compared to state-of-the-art batteries and 3-5 fold reduction in mass compared to current fuel cell technologies.