Performance analysis of a proton exchange membrane

Abstract

Paper presented at the 5th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, South Africa, 1-4 July, 2007.

Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFC) are emerging on the market as a promising technology for powering cars and combined heat and power applications in buildings. The thermodynamic performance of these cells is limited at the moment by membrane technology and power use of the peripheral equipment. The interaction of the fuel cell with it’s peripheral equipment is often not optimized at the moment. Therefore, in this paper a thermodynamic model for Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) Fuel Cells is developed under ASPEN PLUS. This model has to be sufficiently accurate while consuming little computational time. This condition is necessary to integrate the fuel cell model with its peripheral equipment. The model is based on a 3 control volume approach including the complete reaction modelling. The PEM model not only calculates the cell voltage, it also includes a detailed heat transfer model that predicts outlet temperatures and cooling rates. The PEM model can predict the steady-state performance of a stand-alone fuel cell stack. The model is validated by comparing simulated working characteristics with experimental data out of the open literature and with the measured performance of the bench-scale PEM fuel cells at the VITO. Finally the performance and temperature distribution is calculated and compared to know measurement data and other modelling results. The model predictions for temperature are slightly differing from the measurements, but the new model is more accurate then previously formulated models.