Novel techniques of oxygen bleeding for polymer electrolyte fuel cells under impure anode feeding and poisoning condition: A computational study using OpenFOAM®

Abstract

PEM fuel cells fed by steam methane reformate (SMR) and water gas shift reformate (WGSR) are always subjected to catalyst poisoning due to trace amounts of carbon monoxide in the fuel stream. Air or oxygen bleeding are the most common, cost-effective and easy-to-implement methods of mitigation for such conditions. In the present work, important restrictions of oxygen bleeding and disadvantages of continuous constant O2 bleeding are introduced. In order to simulating the problem, a mathematical model containing reaction kinetics, governing equations, boundary conditions and constitutive relations are presented and according to these, a comprehensive OpenFOAM transient multicomponent solver having the capability of simulating anode side of PEM fuel cell is developed, introduced and validated with existing experimental data. In addition, three novel methods of oxygen bleeding: namely pulsating, exponential and sinusoidal methods are introduced which are practical for both open-end and dead-end fuel cells. A quantitative criterion, Oxygen Bleeding Method Effectiveness (OBME), is also introduced to attain comparability of novel methods with continuous constant O2 bleeding as common method. Results showed up to more than 5% increase in recovery ratio accompanied with up to 63% save in oxygen consumption.