Influence of Temperature and Pressure on the Performance of Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell Kumar M. Muthu*, Karthikeyan P.**, Kumar A.P. Senthil*** *Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Nandha Engineering College, Erode, India **Associate Professor, Department of Automobile Engineering, PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore, India ***Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore, India Online published on 3 May, 2016. Abstract Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) fuel cells are having high efficiency and working at low temperature and atmospheric pressure. The operating parameters like temperature, pressure, mass flow rate and humidity of reactant gases, are greatly affecting the performance of the fuel cells. In this paper, the optimum values of the operating temperature and pressure of the PEM fuel cell were found numerically. A single channel PEM fuel cell with active area of 60 mm2 was modeled and analyzed using COMSOL software package. The fuel cell was operated at different temperatures of 40°C, 50°C, 60°C, 70°C and 80°C corresponding to the operating pressures of 0.5 bar, 1 bar, 1.5 bar and 2.0 bar. The current density values of the fuel cell corresponding to the different cell voltages were obtained for all 20 different combinations of the above pressures and temperatures. From the results, it was found that the maximum power density was obtained at the operating pressure of 2 bar and operating temperature of 40°C corresponding the cell potential of 0.35 V. The optimum values of the operating parameters like temperature, pressure and cell potential of PEM fuel cell were found numerically. Top Keywords PEM, operating parameters, temperature; pressure, power density, optimum. Top |