The Impact of Peltier and Dufour Coefficients on Heat Fluxes and Temperature Profiles in the Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cells

We show that the coupling effects in non-equilibrium thermodynamics for heat-, mass- and charge- transport in the polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) all give significant contributions to local heat effects. The set of equations was solved by modifying an open-source 1D fuel cell algorithm. The entropy balance was used to check for model consistency. The balance was obeyed within 10% error in all PEMFC layers, except for the cathode backing. The Dufour effect/thermal diffusion and the Peltier/Seebeck coefficient are commonly neglected. Here they are included systematically. The model was used to compute heat fluxes out of the cell. A temperature difference of 5 K between the left and right boundary of the system could change the heat fluxes up to 44%. The Dufour effect, for instance, increases the temperature of both anode and cathode, up to 9 K. The possibility to accurately predict local heat effects can be important for the design of fuel cell stacks, where intermediate cooling is central. This work is based on Paper 1484 presented at the Atlanta, Georgia, Meeting of the Society, October 13–17, 2019.