Investigation of degradation effects in polymer electrolyte fuel cells under automotive-related operating conditions

Numerical Investigation of Gas-Liquid Two-Phase Flow inside PEMFC Gas Channels with Rectangular and Trapezoidal Cross Sections

“…The reference simulation conditions are V in,air = 5.0 m·s −1 , V in,water = 0.1 m·s −1 , θ g = 130 • , and θ ts = 60 • . The air velocity of 5.0 m·s −1 corresponds to the operating condition of a fuel cell that the active area is 100 cm 2 , the current density is 0.8 A·cm −2 , and the cathode stoichiometry is 2.0 [31]. If the net water transfer coefficient is assumed to be 0.85 [30] and all the generated water changes to liquid phase, liquid water is created at the rate of 0.02 g·s −1 at the same operating conditions.…”

PEMFC for aeronautic applications: A review on the durability aspects

“…One of the reasons could be that it would be easier to study and define operating conditions for aeronautic applications after broadening the understanding of environmental effects on PEMFC performance and lifetime. Research on operating conditions is predominantly limited to stationary and terrestrial conditions [31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39]. Information obtained on effect of aeronautic conditions on PEMFC will assist in defining the optimum operating conditions.…”

Evaluation of reversible and irreversible degradation rates of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells tested in automotive conditions

“…The resulting increase of the ohmic losses over time can significantly reduce the fuel cell performance and efficiency. Typical degradation phenomena observed in the electrodes are loss of electrochemically active surface area due to catalyst particle growth or dissolution [12] and corrosion of the carbon support [13,14] leading to increased ohmic resistance and activation losses. The degradation of the GDL is often due to the loss of hydrophobic agents like polytetrafluorethylene (PTFE) resulting in increased water management issues and increased reactant mass transport resistance of the cell [15].…”

“…To obtain knowledge of the degradation behavior of a certain MEA it is of great interest to know the voltage decay rates at different current densities. However, in the literature dealing with degradation, the voltage decay rates are mainly reported for a single specific load only [10,14,16]. Moreover, reporting a single value for the degradation rate is not unambiguous if no indication about consideration of reversible and irreversible losses is provided.…”