Maintaining proper membrane humidity is crucial to ensure optimal operation of a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell system. A membrane humidifier using the fuel cell exhaust gas to humidify the dry air is studied in this paper. We first develop a thermodynamic model, which captures the crucial dynamic variables of the humidifier, including the pressure, flow rate, temperature, and relative ...

Electrochemistry on gases originated in 1839 with Grove's "gaseous voltaic battery". Over 90 years later, Bacon built a demonstration fuel cell consisting of porous nickel electrodes. He is credited with creating a stable three phase reaction zone of electrode, gas, and electrolyte. Today's fuel cell electrodes are far more sophisticated and lend themselves to other important electrochemical pr...

Neutron imaging of a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) revealed distinct patterns of water fronts moving through the gas diffusion layers (GDL) and channels [1]. The PEMFC was operating with dead-ended, straight and almost vertically-oriented anode channels; hence the gravity driven accumulation of liquid water at the end of the channel caused flooding in an upward direction. In or...

F uel cells have tantalized engineers for more than a century as efficient devices to directly convert chemical energy to electrical energy. However, fuel cell use has been limited to niche applications, like space vehicles and emergency backup power systems, due to their expensive components and specialized fuel requirements. During the past two decades polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel ...

Metal halide ammines have great potential as a future, high-density energy carrier in vehicles. So far known materials, e.g. Mg(NH3)6Cl2 and Sr(NH3)8Cl2, are not suitable for automotive, fuel cell applications, because the release of ammonia is a multi-step reaction, requiring too much heat to be supplied, making the total efficiency lower. Here, we apply density functional theory (DFT) calcula...

The interest in hybrid polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFC) fuelled by hydrogen shipping has seen an unprecedented growth the last years, as it could allow zero-emission navigation. However, technical, safety, and regulatory barriers PEMFC ship design operation are hampering use of such systems on a large scale. While several studies analyse these aspects, comprehensive up-to-date ov...