Influences of reformate on the performance of high temperature proton exchange membrane fuel cell and its optimization strategy

Abstract

Due to the challenges of hydrogen production, storage and transport, hydrocarbon reformate-based high temperature proton exchange membrane fuel cell (HT-PEMFC) has wide application opportunities. However, the inevitable water vapor and CO in reformate significantly determines the fuel cell performance and durability. In this work, a three-dimensional, non-isothermal and multiphase model based on agglomerate sub-model is developed to investigate the effects of reformate components and operating conditions, in which multiphase transport, dissolution, diffusion, adsorption, desorption and reaction of H2 and CO are considered. The results show that the fuel cell performance increases with the rising of water vapor content as CO content higher than 2 % (dry basis, the same below) and water vapor content lower 20 % (wet basis). The alleviation effect of water vapor on CO poisoning is discovered due to reduced CO coverage rather than enhanced CO electrochemical oxidation. An elevated temperature leads to improved performance and the effect of CO poisoning (CO<3%) is weak at 180°C.