DefinePK

Abstract

One of the potential candidate substitute energy sources are fuel cells in the coming. Considering the climate change, global warming and fear of fossil fuel access, in this paper the impacts of operation parameters such as temperature and pressure on polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell performance were examined numerically and experimentally. PROTIUM-20 fuel cell is employed in order to investigate the effects of temperature ranging 25 °C, 30 °C, 35 °C, 40 °C and 45 °C and pressure ranging 0.3, 0.5, 0.7, 0.9 and 1 bar on fuel cell performance. The net performance produced by PROTIUM-20 fuel cell was 20 W (2.38 A × 8.4 V). Experimental results showed that the PEM fuel cell performance enhances, when the operating temperature and pressure increases. Meanwhile, modelling results revealed that the performance of PEM fuel cell was enhanced, as the operating temperature and pressure both increased.