Numerical Study on High Temperature PEM Fuel Cell (HTPEMFC)

High temperature proton exchange membrane fuel cells (HTPEMFCs) can operate at range of temperatures between 373 K and 473 K. The high temperature PEM fuel cell needs hydrogen as a fuel to operate in order to generate electricity. In this work a three-dimensional numerical simulation study was carried out for HTPEMFC. The complete 3D model consisting of the governing equations of Brinkman’s, Maxwell-Stefan, electric potentials and, Navier-Stokes equations, are numerically solved by using CFD software (COMSOL). A parametric study is carried out using the present HTPEMFC model to exhibit the effects of a number of operating conditions, material properties and design parameters including operating temperature, gas diffusion layers porosity, gas diffusion layers thickness, membrane thickness, inlet fuel velocity at anode side, inlet air velocity at cathode side, and operating pressure on the HTPEM fuel cell performance. The obtained result of this parametric study revealed that with higher porosity of gas diffusion layers (GDLs), higher inlet air velocity, and higher operating pressure and with lower thickness of gas diffusion layers (GDLs), and lower thickness of membrane, the performance of HTPEM fuel cell got improved. In addition, it found that the inlet fuel velocity has no effect on the HTPEM fuel cell performance. The numerical results also found that the performance of the HTPEMFC is dropped when the fuel cell operated with higher operating temperature. The present developed HTPEM fuel cell model can be used for optimization of cell design and operation conditions.