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Water and thermal management is an essential issue that influences performance and durability of a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). Water content in membrane decides its ionic conductivity and membrane swelling favors the ionic conductivity, resulting in decreases in the membrane’s ohmic resistance and improvement in the output voltage. However, if excessive liquid water can’t be removed out of cell quickly, it will fill in the pores of catalyst layer (CL) and gas diffusion layer (GDL) then flooding may occur. It is essential to keep the water content in membrane at a proper level. In this work, a transient isothermal one-dimensional model is developed to investigate effects of the relative humidity of inlet gas and cell temperature on performance of a PEMFC.

Proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC) is considered the most promising alternative vehicle power in the future owing to its highly power density and zero carbon emission. However, Voltage inconsistency of PEMFC is an essential issue that influences the performance of a PEMFC. It is affected by flow-rate and relative humidity of the inlet air. It’s necessary to establish a control strategy to ensure air supplied timely. A PEMFC system bench with 30 cells (the cells are numbered 1-30 in the direction from near to far from the air intake port) assembled in series was established to investigate the control strategy of air supply system. According to fuel cell’s position of the lowest voltage and the corresponding air flow rate, there are three different operations as follows. When it appears not in the low numbered area and the air flow rate is high, it indicates that humidity of the cell is insufficient and it needs to reduce power of the blower or close the bypass-valve.

Activation loss, mass transfer loss and ohmic loss are the three main voltage losses of the polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell. While the former two types are relevant to concentration of oxygen in catalyst layer and the later one is associated with the water content in membrane. Distributions of water content and oxygen in a single cell are inconsistent which cause that current densities in each segment of the single cell are different. For the dry inlet gas, the water in the segments near the gas inlet channel will be carried to the segments near the gas outlet channel, which causes high ohmic loss of the segments near the gas inlet channel. In this work, a transfer non-isothermal quasi-three-dimensional model is developed to investigate inconsistency of current densities.