A numerical analysis of two-dimensional proton exchangemembrane fuel cell

The proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC) have been widely recognized as the most promising candidates forfuture power generation devices. In this paper, the steady-state and isothermal modeling of polymer electrolyte fuel cellwas conducted based on single-phase fuel transport using computational fluid dynamics technique. The model includesthe transport of gaseous species, liquid water and protons in the ion conducting polymer. This model also takes in toaccount convection and diffusion of different species in the channels as well as in the porous gas diffusion layer in thesolids as well as in the gases and electrochemical reactions. It is found that the results computed by different models inthe literature often agree well with the experimental data. The results showed that the present two-dimensional model iscapable of identifying important parameters such as cathode humidification, anode and cathode stochiometry, gasdiffusion layer (GDL) and catalyst layer porosity which affect the cell performance, severely. In this research byreducing the cathode humidification and increasing the GDL porosity, the cell performance increased but by reducingthe anode and cathode stochiometry simultaneously and catalyst layer porosity the cell performance decreased.

Keywords:

PEM fuel cells , GDL , Stochiometry , porosity