Modelling and analysis of electrochemical, thermal, and reactant flow dynamics for a PEM fuel cell system

In this paper an approach for the dynamic modelling of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells is presented. A mathematical formulation based on empirical equations is discussed and several features, exhibiting dynamic phenomena, are investigated. A generalized steady state fuel cell model is extended for the development of a method for dynamic electrochemical analysis. Energy balance and reactant flow dynamics are also explained through physical and empirical relationships. A well-researched system (Ballard MK5-E stack based PGS-105B system) is considered in order to understand the operation of a practical fuel cell unit. Matlab-SIMULINK (TM) has been used in simulating the models. The proposed method appears to be relatively simple and consequently requires less computation time. Simulation results are compared with available experimental findings and a good match has been observed.