Honda Motor Co., Ltd.

Tomohisa Kamiyama

Chihiro Wake

Koichiro Miyata

Kenji Taruya

Nobutaka Nakajima

Takashi Yamamoto

Takuto Nakagawa

Masakazu Hamachi

Tomoyuki Yamashiro

A fuel cell system includes a fuel gas leakage sensor provided in a housing chamber to detect leakage of a fuel gas from a fuel cell to an inside of a housing chamber. Circuitry is configured to close at least one of a first valve and a second valve when the fuel gas leakage sensor detects the leakage of the fuel gas. The circuitry is configured to control the fuel cell to generate electric power using the fuel gas in the fuel cell while the at least one of the first valve device and the second valve device is closed when the fuel gas leakage sensor detects the leakage of the fuel gas.

Fuel cell system and method of operating the same

The present invention provides a fuel cell system that can quickly decrease a current/voltage characteristic. A fuel cell system includes an introduction piping which connects a discharging piping and a supply piping in communication with each other, and which introduces part of oxidant-off gas in the supply piping, and a circulation on-off valve provided in the introduction piping. The fuel cell system decreases the supply amount of air by an air compressor when a fuel cell is activated at a low temperature to decrease the air-stoichiometry of the fuel cell, and opens the circulation on-off valve to introduce the oxidant-off gas in the supply piping through the introduction piping, thereby causing the oxidant-off gas to circulate.

Fuel cell system

A fuel cell system includes a fuel cell stack having a membrane electrode assembly and an internal reactant gas passage, a unit that detects or estimates an actual retained water quantity (R.W.Q.), and a power generation control unit having a normal-time mode, a normal-time drying mode and a stop-time drying mode. In the normal-time drying mode, the fuel cell stack is caused to generate electric power while being dried more than in the normal-time mode until the actual R.W.Q. is decreased to a target R.W.Q. In the stop-time drying mode, when the actual R.W.Q. is equal to or more than a flooding threshold at a time of detection of a system stop instruction, the fuel cell stack is caused to generate electric power while being dried more than in the normal-time drying mode until the actual R.W.Q. is decreased to a target R.W.Q.

Fuel cell system and control method for the same

A fuel cell system includes a replacing unit for replacing a gas remaining in the anode of the fuel cell with the anode gas supplied anew by the anode gas supply unit when starting up the fuel cell. The amount of the anode gas is set to be lower, if the operation condition determining unit determines that the last operation was performed in a low-temperature and short-time operation mode. The operation condition determining unit sets the amount of the anode gas so that the gas remaining in the anode can be replaced with the anode gas with an entire anode capacity if the anode was been scavenged while no electro-chemical reaction was progressing in the fuel cell. The present invention can set the amount of anode gas appropriately when starting up the fuel cell.

Growing community of inventors

Saitama, Japan

Tomohisa Kamiyama