Improvement of cold start performance of polymer electrolyte fuel cell using microporous and gas diffusion layers with patterned wettability
Guozhuo Wang, Yoshio Utaka, Shixue Wang
Abstract
This study aimed to improve the cold start characteristics of polymer electrolyte fuel cells (PEFCs) by applying patterned wettability to its microporous layer (MPL) and gas diffusion layer (GDL). An internal cell of the fuel cell stack, which was under adiabatic conditions on both sides, was targeted for cold start in this study. The adiabatic cell was simulated by adding side-mounted heaters to a normal experimental cell to adjust the cell temperature. Experimental measurements were performed for three different combinations of GDLs and MPLs: conventional MPL (C-MPL) and conventional GDL (C-GDL), hybrid MPL (H-MPL) and C-GDL, and dual H-MPL and hybrid GDL (H-GDL). It is shown that the cold start performance improves in the order of C-MPL and C-GDL, H-MPL and C-GDL, and dual H-MPL and H-GDL. Thus, the dual H-MPL and H-GDL is considered to be promising for liquid exclusion and quick water movement in a membrane electrode assembly.