End Plate Effects on the Performance of PEMFCs During Cold Start Process

The efficient, fast, and reliable cold start of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells is one of the major challenges for their commercialization. In this paper a segmented single cell is used to simulate the end plate effects of the stack and to investigate how the effects work. The results demonstrate that the end cells in the stack have the lowest performance, the reasons of which include the lowest temperature of the cells themselves, and probably also the ice blocking in part area inside the MEA, or in the channels, or in both together. In order to mitigate or even to eliminate the influence of the ice formation in the end cells, the temperature of the end plates should be increased to −10 °C or above when the liquid water is generated. A high inlet gas flow rate facilitates the discharge of supercooled water and is conducive to successful cold start.