A Review of Water Management in Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells

Abstract

At present, despite the great advances in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) technology over the past two decades through intensive research and development activities, their large-scale commercialization is still hampered by their higher materials cost and lower reliability and durability. In this review, water management is given special consideration. Water management is of vital importance to achieve maximum performance and durability from PEMFCs. On the one hand, to maintain good proton conductivity, the relative humidity of inlet gases is typically held at a large value to ensure that the membrane remains fully hydrated. On the other hand, the pores of the catalyst layer (CL) and the gas diffusion layer (GDL) are frequently flooded by excessive liquid water, resulting in a higher mass transport resistance. Thus, a subtle equilibrium has to be maintained between membrane drying and liquid water flooding to prevent fuel cell degradation and guarantee a high performance level, which is the essential problem of water management. This paper presents a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art studies of water management, including the experimental methods and modeling and simulation for the characterization of water management and the water management strategies. As one important aspect of water management, water flooding has been extensively studied during the last two decades. Herein, the causes, detection, effects on cell performance and mitigation strategies of water flooding are overviewed in detail. In the end of the paper the emphasis is given to: (i) the delicate equilibrium of membrane drying vs. water flooding in water management; (ii) determining which phenomenon is principally responsible for the deterioration of the PEMFC performance, the flooding of the porous electrode or the gas

Control of the Air Supply Subsystem in a PEMFC with Balance of Plant Simulation

“…In effect, oxygen starvation is attributed among others, to factors such as insufficiency in oxygen supply due to sudden increases in power requirements, non-uniform oxygen distribution or poor control of anode and cathode pressure equilibrium [46]. A further difficulty taking place at the cathode if oxygen is depleted is that proton (H + ) reduction occurs instead of oxygen reduction [47]. Successive oxygen starvation or depletion processes may produce permanent damage or degradation of the fuel cell, which contributes to the reduction of its lifetime.…”

Water Transport and Removal in PEMFC Gas Flow Channel with Various Water Droplet Locations and Channel Surface Wettability

“…Due to the complexity of water transport and the removal mechanisms in PEMFC, water management remains a major concern and challenge in the application of PEMFC, which still requires much work to be done on the basic understanding of water transport and removal in PEMFC. Water management in PEMFC can be investigated both numerically [1,2] and experimentally [3]. Water transport and removal in both the gas flow channel [4,5] and porous electrode [6] are important to fuel cell performance.…”

Development and Characterization of Non-Conventional Micro-Porous Layers for PEM Fuel Cells

“…Therefore, changes in energy production are needed and, in this respect, proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) are considered very promising due to their zero-emission energy production process. Moreover, they show many advantages in terms of low operating temperature, compactness, fast response to load change and high efficiency [3][4][5][6][7]. The electrolyte used in the device is a polymer-based membrane and is usually composed by fluorinated compounds; Nafion ® , which was developed by Dupont in the late 1960s, is a very common polymer for that kind of application [8].…”