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Studies and Development of Self-humidifying PEM Fuel Cell

¡@¡@In this thesis, we develop a self-humidifying PEMFC. The humidifying effects on the stability and impedance of the fuel cell are studied. A portable and passive PEMFC stack usually exposes in the ambient no matter that it works or not. However, the ambient is far from saturated. The water within MEA will diffuse to the membrane¡¦s surface and evaporate continuously. The membrane will be short in water without water supplying. Because the conductivity of H+ of the membrane is highly dependent on water content, the dehydration of the membrane will reduce the interconnected passageway of H+ and affect the performance of fuel cell directly. And because of the different expansion rate the electrode of MEA is also possible to separate from its membrane when it operates repeatedly. This separation will make the performance of fuel cell an unrecovered decay.
¡@¡@At first, the hydration status of the dry membrane is observed. We measure the addition weight of water into membrane by using cotton thread humidifying, and estimate the water permeation distances. The maximum water supply rate of cotton thread is 4.26mg/min, and the permeation rate of water through membrane where is 2.5cm from water surface is 0.15mg/cm¡Dmin. Then we design the self-humidifying devices of PEMFC stack. The humidifying effects on performance and stability of the fuel cell are studied.
¡@¡@When the active area is 0.7¡Ñ4.5cm2 and the cotton thread is 5mm from the center of electrode the supplying water can arrive at the reaction area under the electrode through the membrane in one minute. The difference of the supplying water between the bottom and top is 7% by using 6cm cotton thread. Therefore water can hydrate the membrane and the difference of the supplying water between bottom and top is not oversize. The higher current load, the voltage efficiency is lower. The increasing heat generation rate results in the water evaporation rate would be greater than the water generation rate. So the drop of voltage under higher current is greater than lower current. By comparing with the difference of high frequency impedance the change of humidifying is smaller between 1hr operating. It indicates that humidifying by cotton thread keeps the membrane hydration.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0905111-115422
Date05 September 2011
CreatorsChen, Chun-Yu
ContributorsLong-Jeng Chen, Chung-Fu Liu, Peng-sheng Wei, Ming-San Lee
PublisherNSYSU
Source SetsNSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive
LanguageCholon
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0905111-115422
Rightsuser_define, Copyright information available at source archive

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