Ordered by Emschergenossenschaft, the fuel cell research centre ZBT developed an innovative technology, which is used for the continuous monitoring of the quality of hydrogen from biogas.

The monitoring is done using two small single fuel cells, through which the gas quality of biohydrogen is compared with high-purity hydrogen bundle. The cell voltage is monitored to determine the quality of the hydrogen from biogas utilising the high sensitivity of fuel cell  to harmful components in the feed gases. The result is a voltage decrease, thus reducing performance of the fuel cell stack. Both test cells are identical in structure and are used under the same operating conditions. Increased voltage differences between the two fuel cells in operation indicate a declining quality of the bio-hydrogen and the supply to the gas station can be stopped immediately. This ensures, that biohydrogen with decreasing quality only contaminates the inexpensive replaceable single stacks and doesn’t destroy complete fuel cell systems.

• Department Fuel cells and systems
• fuel cell systems