Performance Evaluation of a Cylindrical PEM Fuel Cell and the Stack

DOI

10.2991/ahe.k.210202.019How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Fuel cells, Air-breathing, cylindrical, temperature, humidity, durability

Abstract

Air-breathing fuel cells, due to their ability of using oxygen directly from air, have the potential to emerge as a primary power source for various applications. Cylindrical fuel cells offer the advantage of higher gravimetric and volumetric power densities compared to conventional planar fuel cells. In the present study, the durability of single cylindrical cell is tested based on a new European driving cycle and the cell is shown to be stable for more than 200 h of operation at different current densities. The decrease in the performance is observed to be the result of increase in membrane resistance rather than catalyst degradation or hydrogen crossover. Furthermore, the performance of a stack of 16 cylindrical fuel cells is evaluated at different relative humidities and temperatures of air on the cathode side. The effect of cell positioning on the stack performance in terms of deficiency of oxygen is also studied. Both relative humidity and temperature are observed to have an effect on the durability of the stack. Increment in the temperature of air is also seen to upset the performance of the stack. Higher relative humidity (⁓80%) and lower temperature (⁓35 oC) are observed to stabilize the stack in terms of performance and durability on a time scale of more than 2 h.

Copyright

© 2021, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Suseendiran S. Ravichandran
AU  - Gowri Mohandass
AU  - Amit C. Bhosale
AU  - Raghunathan Rengasamy
AU  - Ramya Ramkumar
AU  - Suman Roy Choudhury
PY  - 2021
DA  - 2021/02/04
TI  - Performance Evaluation of a Cylindrical PEM Fuel Cell and the Stack
BT  - Proceedings of the 14th International Renewable Energy Storage Conference 2020 (IRES 2020)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 119
EP  - 126
SN  - 2589-4943
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/ahe.k.210202.019
DO  - 10.2991/ahe.k.210202.019
ID  - Ravichandran2021
ER  -