Water balance and multiplicity in a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell

✍ Scribed by Ee-Sunn J. Chia; Jay B. Benziger; Ioannis G. Kevrekidis

• Publisher: American Institute of Chemical Engineers
• Year: 2004
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 114 KB
• Volume: 50
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0001-1541
• DOI: 10.1002/aic.10190

✦ Synopsis

Polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEM-FC) have received widespread attention as an alternative power source (EG&G Services, 2000). Fuel cells for mobile applications will necessarily be nonsteady-state (variable loads in power plants, climate effects on temperature and humidity, but also fast changes, such as vehicle acceleration). Predictive models of fuel cell performance that correctly incorporate the transient interplay of reaction and transport processes are therefore critical. A differential PEM fuel cell reactor was constructed to examine kinetics and dynamics (Benziger et al., 2003;Benziger et al., 2004); this reactor design, which bypasses the additional complexity of two-and three-dimensional (3-D) integral reactors (