Effects of temperature and humidification levels on the performance of a proton exchange membrane fuel cell

Abstract

Numerical investigation of a proton exchange membrane fuel cell performance subjected to various humidification and thermal conditions is the focus of this study. Governing equations describing species, mass, momentum, and enthalpy conservation are employed and solved by a computational fluid dynamic algorithm to obtain domain's physical properties and cell performance. The model accounts for electrochemical kinetic as well as two-phase flow with phase change and water transport. Numerical prediction results use polarization curves and contour plots to illustrate the effects of various humidification schemes and temperature gradient scenarios. Findings show that humidification-level perturbation on the anode or cathode side creates different effects. Mechanisms influencing performance-variation tendencies are interpreted. In addition modelling results with existing temperature gradient exhibit different trends on the overpotentials depending on the slope and magnitude. At higher cathode temperature, it is shown that polarization curves are dominated by reaction kinetics and membrane water content at medium and high reaction rates, respectively.