The ideal fuel cell operating strategy concerning water transfer is to keep the ionomer membrane fully saturated and avoid the unfavorable water condensing. In this work, the theoretical models are developed and utilized to set up an optimal water man...
The ideal fuel cell operating strategy concerning water transfer is to keep the ionomer membrane fully saturated and avoid the unfavorable water condensing. In this work, the theoretical models are developed and utilized to set up an optimal water management strategy preventing liquid water formation in the reactant supplying channels. It is further applied to find out the required humidity level of reactant feed streams satisfied with full saturation levels at the channels outlets as a function of the physical operating conditions (i.e., pressure, temperature, and fuel/oxidant utilization) with a gradual temperature increase in the coolant. In this model, the analytical results showed that the favorable water transport scenario (half of produced water transported back to anode) requires less humidification at the .gas channel inlets compared to the worst scenario (10% of the produced water diffused back to anode). It was also shown that for 80℃ operation of fuel cells, the reactants should be super-saturated and the coolant temperature difference less than 5℃ between the inlet and outlet has a significant effect on the humidification of reactant gases.