A Simulation of Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cells with Co-Flow/Counter-Flow Pattern under Dry Condition

Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cel ls (PEFCs) posses various virtues and are expected to be standard in the next generation. However, great progress still remains to be made for its realistic use in the society. For instance, there are factors such as material, structure, and operating condition that are necessary to be optimized. To cope with these issues, experimental effort is indispensable, but there are also problems proper to experiments: numerous experiments must be performed to gain insights, and it is difficult to measure the PEFC when it is under operation. Due to such situation, computational approach is attracting much interest and research is performed eagerly in this direction [1]. Among numbers of expectations directed toward computer simulation, one is to extract knowledge about operation under extreme conditions that are di f f icul t to perform in laboratory experiments. In this work, a simulation of a PEFC under dry condition, which is a representative case difficult to perform an actual operation, is attempted. Experimental results are reproduced quantitatively by fitting a few parameters included in the model.