This work concerns the study and the modeling of hybrid Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) Fuel Cell electric vehicle. In fact, the paper deals with the model description of the powertrain which includes two energy sources: a PEM Fuel Cell as a primary source and a supercapacitor as a secondary source. The architecture is two degrees of freedom permitting a stability of the DC bus voltage. The hybr...

This paper describes a methodology for design and optimization of a polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The focus of this paper is the optimization of the fuel cell propulsion system and hydrogen storage system for a baseline aircraft. Physics-based models, and experimentally-derived sub-system performance data are used to characterize the performance of ...

Proton exchange membranes (PEM) for a direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) have main drawbacks which are methanol permeability, reduced proton conductivity and the cost of the membrane. This paper reviews different polymeric materials such as fluorinated, non-fluorinated, acid-base complex, and composite membranes for DMFC. Currently, nonfluorinated membranes gain a lot of atte...

While problems related to CO poisoning still exist for the anode, most of the efficiency loss (80%) in a fuel cell arises due to the cathode. Oxygen reduction at the cathode requires the largest amount of the catalyst in PEM fuel cells due to its lower activity. This problem needs to be solved before mass commercialization of fuel cells can be achieved. The specific objective is to synthesize n...

This paper is concerned with the simultaneous flow of liquid water and gaseous reactants in mini-channels of a proton exchange membrane PEM) fuel cell. Envisaging the mini-channels as structured and ordered porous media, we develop a continuum model of two-phase channel ow based on two-phase Darcy’s law and the M2 formalism, which allow estimate of the parameters key to fuel cell operation such...

A simple tanks-in-series model is presented, which allows for the understanding of the basic physics behind complex spatiotemporal behaviors observed in self-humidified polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells. Our approach is focused on how the intrinsically nonlinear dynamics of water formation couples with water transport, leading to multistability, inhomogeneous steady state current pr...