Design Of Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell Test Station And The Single Cell Modeling

A fuel cell test station was designed and built for PEMFC catalyst evaluation. The system consisted of fuel supply part, gas humidification part, temperature gauge and control part and electronic control part. We designed and made the gas humidification unit, which could conveniently make gas reach different humidity. After tuning of electronic control part and single cell test set, we tested the single cell with regular MEA and got good result.So we got a reliable test station for small scale PEMFC single cell.The test station has high usability and low maintenance cost, could be used for performance test of PEMFC catalyst, membrane and MEA.To improve and guide the design of PEMFC test station, a comprehensive two-dimensional full cell mathematic model was developed for PEMFC with conventional parallel flow channels.In this model, the transport of the two charged species,electrons and ions,as well as that of the chemical species in MEA was considered. The model treats the catalyst layer as spherical agglomerates of polymer electrolyte coated catalyst particles. Different parameters for polymer electrolyte content in agglomerate and catalyst layer porosity were employed under different cell voltage.The polarization curves predicted at base case by the model agreed well with the published experimental data. Profiles of chemical species and current density within MEA in running state were investigated respectively. The influences of pressure and sizes of Pt particles in catalyst on the fuel cell performance were also investigated.The simulation results showed the mass transport and reaction phenomena in MEA,suggested that water draining at cathode and gas humidification at anode is important to maintain the performance of single cell.The results indicated that high pressure of cathode inlet gas was good for PEMFC single cell performance,especially running under low cell voltage.It also indicated that within the same Pt loading, the fuel cell performance is better at smaller Pt particle size.This paper can guide the further improvement of PEMFC test station design and MEA preparation.