The team assembled for this project will perform the following tasks: 1. Obtain representative samples of physical parameter sensors currently available to meet the targets specified in the fuel cells section of the Hydrogen, Fuel Cells and Infrastructure Technologies Program (HFCIT) Multi-Year R,D&D Plan (MYP). 2. Design and construct a facility for testing physical and chemical sensors under ...

Nano-scale palladium was bio-manufactured via enzymatically-mediated deposition of Pd(II) from solution. The bio-accumulated metal palladium crystals were processed and applied onto carbon paper and tested as anodes in a proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell for power production. Up to 85% and 31% of the maximum power generation was achieved by Bio-Pd catalysts made using two strains of bact...

An essential requirement for an operating PEM fuel cell is providing proper water content in the membrane. To avoid water flooding an appropriate water balance is required. Here, an analytic model of a planar membrane humidifier for PEM fuel cell is proposed where the effect of dimensional parameters includes membrane thickness, membrane area and channel hydraulic diameter are investigated. A N...

Polymer electrolyte membranes (PEM) and Pt-based catalysts are two crucial components which determine the properties and price of fuel cells. Even though, PEM faces problem of fuel crossover in liquid fuel cells such as direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) and direct borohydride fuel cell (DBFC), which lowers power output greatly. Here, we report a DBFC in which a polymer fiber membrane (PFM) was u...

Usually, modelling of fuel cell systems uses complex expressions, based on the knowledge of physicalchemical phenomena. These models require a good knowledge of the parameters involved in the processes that, in many cases, are difficult to determine. A solution to avoid this difficulty consists in using black-box models, such as those based on artificial neural networks (ANN). This paper presen...

To simulate a new economical architecture for PEM fuel cell and investigate the effectiveness of the introduced structure on the performance, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code is used to solve the equations for a single domain of the cell namely: the flow field, the mass conservation, the energy conservation, the species transport, and the electric/ionic fields under the assumptions of st...

Elevated-temperature (100~200 °C) polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells have many features, such as their high efficiency and simple system design, that make them ideal for residential micro-combined heat and power systems and as a power source for fuel cell electric vehicles. A proton-conducting solid-electrolyte membrane having high conductivity and durability at elevated temperatures...

Oxygen transport across the cathode gas diffusion layer (GDL) in polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells was examined by varying the O2/N2 ratio and by varying the area of the GDL extending laterally from the gas flow channel under the bipolar plate (under the land). As the cathode is depleted of oxygen, the current density becomes limited by oxygen transport across the GDL. Oxygen deplet...