Performance of a polymer electrolyte fuel cell for automotive applications

Abstract The objectives of this study were to fabricate a self‐humidifying fuel cell stack of 10 cells with 104 cm2 cell areas humidified with water recovered at cathodes, and to measure and simulate the performance of the stack. This involves the simulation of a three‐dimensional model of the heat and mass transfer of the water and the gaseous reactants in the fuel cell components with a water‐cooling system. The results of the stack experiments indicated a maximum power of 250 kW at a current density of 0.5 A/cm2. The simulation showed good agreement with the actual performance of the stack. The performance of the self‐humidifying stack with a vapor‐permeating membrane is comparable to a conventional stack with external humidifiers, and it appears very effective in simplifying stack systems. The modeling analysis indicated that for the gas flow directions, at anode and cathode, a parallel flow is superior to a cross flow, and that one cooling cell is necessary for two to three generating cells in order to maintain the fuel cell temperature below 100 °C. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Heat Trans Asian Res, 31(6): 421–429, 2002; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/htj.10041