A Non-isothermal model of a Laboratory Intermediate Temperature Fuel Cell using PBI doped Phosphoric Acid Membranes

Tiago Sousa (1) , Mohamed Mamlouk (2) , Keith Scott (3)

1 School of Chemical Engineering and Advanced Materials
2 School of Chemical Engineering and Advanced Materials
3 School of Chemical Engineering and Advanced Materials

A two-dimensional non-isothermal model developed for a single Intermediate Temperature Fuel Cell with a phosphoric acid doped PBI membrane is developed. The model of the experimental cell incorporates the external heaters, and the all body of the fuel cell. The catalyst layers were treated as spherical catalyst particles agglomerates with porous inter-agglomerate space. The inter-agglomerate space is filled with a mixture of electrolyte (hot phosphoric acid) and PTFE. All the major transport phenomena are taken into account except the crossover of species through the membrane. This model was used to study the influence of two different geometries (along the channel direction and cross the channel direction) on performance. It became clear, through the performance analyses, that the predictions obtained by the along the channel geometry did not represent the general performance trend, and therefore this geometry is not appropriate for fuel cell simulations. Results also indicate that the catalyst layer was not efficiently used, which leads to large temperatures differences through the MEA.

Mots clés: Physical Sciences

Tiago Sousa, Mohamed Mamlouk, Keith Scott. A Non-isothermal model of a Laboratory Intermediate Temperature Fuel Cell using PBI doped Phosphoric Acid Membranes. Fuel Cells, 2010, 10 (6), pp.993. ⟨10.1002/fuce.200900178⟩. ⟨hal-00574807⟩