Effect of the operation and humidification temperatures on the performance of a pem fuel cell stack on dead-end mode

Proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells have attracted grate attention in recent years as a promising replacement for traditional engines. The performance of PEM fuel cells is known to be influenced by many parameters such as operation temperature and humidification of the gas streams. In this work, a testbench was developed to monitor and control a 300W fuel cell stack. Series of polarization curves with different fuel cell operation temperatures and humidification temperatures have been studied. From the polarization curves the values of kinetic parameters such as the Tafel slope and the cell resistance have been calculated with the fit of the experimental data to an empirical model. The effect of the fuel cell and humidification temperatures on the kinetic parameters has been studied. © 2011 by ESG.