Understanding heat and charge transfer in a low temperature PEM Single Cell: a simulation tool development

Abstract

This work is a study of coupled charges and heat transfers phenomena on a low temperature PEMFC single cell. A one-dimensional steady state model was developed to compute current and temperature distributions in a PEMFC single cell whatever the operating conditions. The work comprises of three parts: Firstly, a literature survey was conducted to describe the principle of a PEMFC and the fundamental operations. A state of the art of the previous modeling works on the PEMFC was also presented in this part. Secondly, the developed model using the basic relations to describe heat and charges transfer phenomena occurring in the single PEM cell was presented. Finally, a simple simulation tool called FCvb was performed and optimized using Visual Basic Excel and referring to the previous relations in the developed model. To finalize this study, a conclusion and perspectives were presented in the last part of this work.