TEMPERATURE DEPENDENCY ON FUEL CELL PERFORMANCE

Abstract

The recent developments in the fuel cell technology have enabled us to go for their commercial applications. The rapid accelerations in fuel cell development is not likely to wane in the near future, as the desire for decreased dependence on petroleum supplies, lower pollution and potential for high efficiency are driving this technology toward an alternative power generation technology. The energy policies of the developed and developing countries need to deal with two critical issues, i.e. to improve their security in energy supplying, by decreasing their dependence on oil, and to meet the requirements connected to global warming due to green-house gas emissions. Among all the technical proposals, the fuel cell is one of the most potential and feasible solutions to achieve this goal. In a fuel cell hydrogen is used as a fuel and electrical power and water are produced. Unlike engines, there is no harmful emission or noise pollution from a fuel cell and there is no need of its recharging like any storage cell. Due to these facts fuel cells are called zero emission engines. Fuel cells are classified in to so many types based on the electrolyte employed in it, but the proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEM) has been widely considered as one of the most promising candidates for automobiles because of high power density, low operative temperature, fast start-up characteristics and good dynamic performance. Considerable attention is being paid for further advancement in the fuel cell technology, but virtually no attempt has been made to estimate kinetic parameters for the chemical reactions taking place at the anode and cathode of the cell. In the present work kinetic parameters for the oxidation reaction taking place at the anode is determined experimentally and an Arrhenius type relation between reaction rate kinetics and temperature was observed. As the temperature of the fuel cell is the key factor for its performance, in the present work the temperature dependency of other parameters were also studied. The influence of temperature on efficiency of the system, power density, current density and reaction rate of hydrogen were studied experimentally.