In 2018 the International Maritime Organization (IMO) addressed the difficult problem to reduce shipping GHGs emission, left apart since now from international Climate Change agreements [1]To challenge this problem the focus has been given to Alternative Fuels. Among all, Hydrogen represents one of the most interesting due to the possibility to combine it to Renewable Energy Source excess production issues [2]. For this reason, Fincantieri launched a Joint laboratory in collaboration with the University of Genoa, the HI-SEA Laboratory. The facility is made up of 8 PEMFC modules, supplied by Nuvera Fuel Cells, and it represents the world’s biggest PEMFC power plant specifically designed for the assessment of marine applications, with the goal to scale up the available PEM technology to MW size, addressing all the issues related to the installation and operation of this technology on-board a ship. This work concerns an experimental campaign aimed to assess the performance of the system under different operative conditions, with the goal to identify and quantify the influence of operational parameters. A comparative performance analysis is presented against the Factory Test data. The first step towards the validation of a simulation model for the prediction of system performance is carried out. This is the basis for a future work that will bring to a validate design tool for the scale up of fuel cell plant from kW to MW, specifically designed for marine application.18
