Effect on high frequency resistance behavior of proton exchange membrane fuel cell during storage process

Abstract

The high frequency resistance (HFR) is used to characterize the water content in the proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC), and the change of cell HFR during the storage process after gas purge with different storage and purge conditions is studied in this paper. The repeatability of the experiment is verified firstly. Then, the changes of cell HFR with different storage conditions include cell temperature, environment temperature, initial cell HFR are analyzed. Finally, the effect of purge conditions in the preparation stage on the cell HFR is studied by change the purge flow rate, purge gas type, purge methods. The results show that the cell HFR is affected by both the storage conditions and the purge operation conditions. The time for the PEMFC to reach the maximum HFR increases with the decrease of the environment temperature and the increase of the initial cell temperature. The final stable HFR value decreases with the increases of the environment temperature.