Investigation of the Effect of Anode Fuel Contaminants on the Performance of Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

1 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic), 424 Hafez Ave., Tehran, Iran, P. Code 15875-4413

2 Department of mechanical engineering, Amirkabir university of technology

Abstract

In the present work, a two-dimensional, transient, two-phase (two-fluid model), multicomponent model is considered for the anode-side of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells. The cell is assumed to include flow channel, gas diffusion layer, and catalyst layer. The discretized governing equations are numerically solved on a non-uniform grid with an in-house developed code. First, the steady-state effects of introducing Carbon-Monoxide-contaminated hydrogen on the cell performance were investigated. Then, the dynamic behavior of the cell under Carbon-Monoxide poisoning and the effects of air bleeding on the recovery of the output current density were investigated. The results were validated against experimental data, and it was indicated that even introducing a trace amount of contamination leads to significant degradation of cell performance (about 70% of output current was lost within 30 minutes when the hydrogen is pre-mixed with 10 part per million of Carbon Monoxide). Injecting a small amount of air into the anode stream resulted in a fast recovery of the lost current density (by injecting about 5% air into anode fuel, 80% of the output current was recovered within 2 minutes at 53 part per million Carbon Monoxide). Higher air bleeding ratio only resulted in minor improvement of the cell performance.

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References

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Amirkabir Journal of Mechanical Engineering
Volume 52, Issue 2
May 2020
Pages 381-398

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