Analysis of water transport in PEFCs by magnetic resonance imaging measurement

Management of water is one of the most important issues that limits the operation of polymer electrolyte fuel cells (PEFCs). To better understand water transport in polymer electrolyte membranes (PEMs), a one-dimensional model has been analyzed for water transport in a PEM. To increase the model accuracy, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) experiments were done to determine the optimum parameters for the model. Using the resulting parameters, we programmed the measured number of maximum water content of the membrane in a fuel cell and water transfer coefficient of the membrane surface. The resulting water distribution of the PEM under various operation conditions was consistent with previous MRI measurements.