Abstract—One of the most important performance in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell, is the problem in the water balance. At the same time being so that wet membrane for proton transfer,it can prevent from the cathode flooding and anode drying. Inlet stoichiometry to anode and cathode channels is one of the most important parameters in maintaining this balance. In this study, the effect of inlet stoichiometry on distribution of local current density, oxygen concentration and activation overpotential investigated by three-dimentional mathematical modeling which is according to conservation law, electrochemical reactions, ohmic losses and mass diffution with assuming the spiral arrangement of the flow channel, ideal gas mixture and being fully hydrated membrane. Modeling results, shows that increasing the inlet stoichiometry to cathode channel due to more air entering channel, resulting in more water leaving channel and lead to reduce water flooding and thus increase in electrochemical reaction and result to increase current density, activation overpotential and decrease Oxygen concentration. Increasing stoichiometry of anode also has a similar effect with the cathode stoichiometry. Because of this increase resulting to increased the hydrogen concentration along the anode channel, and thus, the electrochemical reaction speed up and therefor results to current density and activation overpotential increment
Index Terms—Polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell, current density distribution, stoichiometry, three-dimensional modeling
M. benam, A. Jamekhorshid. M. Saleh, and M. Samipourgiry are with the Department of Chemical Engineering, North Branch, Islamic Azad University, and Tehran, Iran. (Corresponding author :phone +(98 21 88787204); fax: +(98 21 88787204), e-mail: mona.roshdibenam@yahoo.com Jamekhorshid@Gmail.com, mahyar_saleh@yahoo.com)
A. Gooyavar is with Metallurgy and Material science Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran. e-mail: Sub_zeron2@yahoo.com)
Cite: Mona. Roshdi benam, Ahmad. Jamekhorshid, Mahyar.Saleh, Mohamad. Samipourgiry, and Amir Sahand. Gooyavar, "Effect of inlet Stoichiometry in to Anode and Cathode Channels on Performance of Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell by using Three-Dimesional Mathematical Modeling," International Journal of Modeling and Optimization vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 174-178, 2012.
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