Recent Research on Water Management Problem in Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells: A Brief Review
Keywords:
Proton exchange membrane fuels cell (PEMFC), gas diffusion layer, water flooding, reactants, water removalAbstract
Proton exchange membrane fuels cell (PEMFC) is fuel cell that uses hydrogen and oxygen as its fuel and the most interesting thing about this cell is that it only produces liquid water as its main by-product. This makes PEMFCs as one of the promising and interesting sources of power for the future because they are fully in compliance with the environmental policies and goal of this generation. However, commercialization and full harnessing of this novel cell has yet to commence despite showing some strong prospects and potentials. This may be largely due to the technical issues surrounding the operation of PEMFC. The two main issues that pose serious concern are water and thermal managements. Concerning the water management, two important critical issues that are inter-related involve cell dehydration and water flooding, both of which have adverse effects on the performances of these cells. Subsequently, these concerns draw the attention of the research community, where a large number of research has been carried out employing different methods and approaches to solve this problem. In this review, some of the recent advances in the research on water flooding and removal problems in PEMFC are reviewed and their research findings reported, especially with regard to the factors that affect the water flooding and removal, influence and effects of some of the scientific approaches to solving these problems. These factors include those emanating from the gas flow channel design, use of acoustic vibration and gas diffusion layer modification, all of which are reported in this study.
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