Relationship among Gas and Water Flow Behavior, Local Current Density Distribution and Cell Performance in Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cell

摘要

The objective of this paper is to observe water production behavior inside of the cell and to analyze its effect on current distributions over the reaction area. A fuel cell was made to allow direct observation of the phenomena in cathode side and local current density measurement in anode side. The experimental results showed production and flow of liquid water in the cell and there were good correlations among distributions of current density and water amount in channels. From the behavior of current, voltage, water distribution, and pressure difference in the cathode channel, hypotheses were made on the possibility of gas paths deep in GDL in flooding condition.