The experimental tests and analysis of a fuel cell unit and a 150 W fuel cell stack are performance in this research. The experimental items in this study are various the types of flow channels, fasten torque, inlet gas pressure, Pt loading density, oxidizers, electron collector type etc. Through above a series of the tests, we can understand the key factors which influence the performance of the PEMFC. The experimental results can also provide us references when one assemble a fuel cell stack in future. PEMFC can start quickly at low temperature and achieves stable output voltage. When the 8 N-M torque is applied to fasten the reaction chamber, the contact resistance between electrode and electron collector reaches a minimum value. By designing the flow channel properly, the membrane hydration can remain a good state so that the conductivity of the proton exchange membrane can not be hinder. We found that the optimum channel among three types of the test channels is the conventional channel with the rib width 2 mm. When the output power is largest. Our experiments display that the increase of Pt loading in cathode can improve PEMFC performance. At certain voltage, there is a critical value in Pt loading. PEMFC performance can not be improved when Pt loading increases over this value. When the inlet pressure in cathode side increase to 10~20 psi higher than the pressure in anode side, the output power can improve apparently. Keyword: Proton exchange membrane, Pt loading, electron collector.

Direct membrane deposition was used to produce record platinum catalyst utilization efficiency polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells. The novel membrane fabrication technique was applied to gas diffusion electrodes with low Pt-loadings of 0.102 and 0.029 mg/cm2. Under oxygen atmosphere and 300 kPaabs total pressure, 88 kW/gPt cathodic catalyst utilization efficiency with a symmetrical Pt-loading of 0.029 mg/cm2 on the anode and cathode side was achieved. This is 2.3 times higher than the Pt-utilization efficiency of a reference fuel cell prepared using a commercial Nafion N-211 membrane and identical catalyst layers, emphasizing that the improvement is purely attributable to the novel membrane fabrication technique. This value represents the highest Pt-utilization efficiency reported in literature. The results strongly motivate the application of employing direct membrane deposition techniques to prepare low resistance polymer electrolyte thin films in order to compensate for kinetic losses introduced when using low catalyst loadings.