The Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cell (PEFC) is one of the alternative power plants to replace the conventional Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) in vehicles. In order to apply the PEFC to dynamic operating environment such as in automotive applications, i...
The Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cell (PEFC) is one of the alternative power plants to replace the conventional Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) in vehicles. In order to apply the PEFC to dynamic operating environment such as in automotive applications, it is necessary that the PEFC technologies should be developed together with the control system of the PEFC. The modeling of the PEFC is the first step to develop the control system of the PEFC. In this study, a PEFC model which uses lumped parameters is developed that is mathematically simple, but well represents the essential phenomena which affect PEFC performance. The performance of the PEFC mainly depends on membrane properties and thermodynamics of the gas in the fuel cell system. The PEFC model structure describes water transport phenomena in the membrane and thermal behaviour in the fuel cell system. We consider that the PEFC system consists of three physically distinctive parts: the anode channel, the cathode channel, and the Membrane Electrode Assembly (MEA). The laws of mass conservation and the energy conservation are adopted to describe each physical part as a control volume. In addition, the MEA model contains the steady-state electrochemical model which consists of the membrane hydration model and the stack voltage model.