Optimization of gas feeding operations for polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell with the co-flow feeding gas mode

Optimal gas feeding operations for polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is of great importance for the selection of auxiliary components, including air compressor, humidifier, etc., to assemble an efficient power source system. In this work, taking a co-flow 20-cell PEMFC stack as example, the orthogonal experiment is designed to optimize 3 sets of operating parameters, including cathode stoichiometry, cathode inlet dew temperature and cell temperature. It is found the cathode inlet dew temperature has the largest impact on PEMFC’s output voltage, which is different from the results of counter-flow PEMFC stack in the works of other researchers. Besides, the optimized combination of the operating parameters is achieved as follow: the cathode stoichiometry is 2.5, and the relative humidity (RH) of cathode inlet gas is close to 100%.