Influence of Channel Dimensions on Behavior of a Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell

摘要

In this study, we present a fuel cell model that takes into account of the heat and mass transfers in the Membrane Electrolyte Assembly (MEA). The studied model is based on a transient model by combining independent descriptions of heat and mass transfers in the cell with a third description of coupled charge and mass transfers in the electrodes. We used this model with different dimension of the bipolar plate channel to study the effect of the channel dimension on internal heat generation of a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell width. Optimum values for each of the dimensions (channel width, land width and channel depth) were obtained. Consequently, their use would lead to improved fuel cell efficiency.