A study on the characteristic of the anodic dead-end mode PEM fuelcell and performance improvement by pulsation effect

수소 데드 앤드 연료전지의 특성 및 맥동을 이용한 성능 향상에 관한 실험적 연구

This paper presents experimental results carried out on the purge characteristic of the anodic dead-end mode fuelcell and how to improve the cell performance by pulsation effects. The dead-end mode fuelcell has some merits that a fuel supplying device is not needed and the cell power is higher than that in the open mode fuelcell. However, the purge is necessary for preventing the porous media from being flooded by liquid water formed in the channel. At this time, the un-reacted fuel is discharged with the liquid water together in purge process. The discharged fuel can make the fuel efficiency lower. Therefore, the number of purge times should be decreased for the better fuel efficiency. In this study, the outlet of the anode channel was equipped with a purge solenoid valve and a pulsation generator. The purge times was decreased when the current density decreased and operation pressure increased without the pulsation effects. In addition, when the pulsation effects such as various frequencies or amplitudes were applied, purge times was alleviated up to 40%.