Development of a one-dimensional and semi-empirical model for a high temperature proton exchange membrane fuel cell

High temperature proton exchange membrane fuel cells (HT-PEMFC), which operate between 160 °C and 200 °C, can be generally used in portable and stationary power generation applications. In this study, a one-dimensional, semi-empirical, and steady-state model of a HT-PEMFC fed with a gas mixture consisting of hydrogen and carbon monoxide is developed. Some modeling parameters are adjusted using empirical data, which are obtained conducting experiments on a HT-PEMFC for different values of Pt loading and cell temperature. For adjusting these parameters, the total summation of the square of the difference between the cell voltages found using the experimental and theoretical methods is minimized using genetic algorithm. After finding the values of the adjusted parameters, the effects of different cell temperature, Pt loading, phosphoric acid (PA) percentage, and different binders (PBI and PVDF) on the performance of the fuel cell are examined. It was found that, the performance of the fuel cell using PVDF binder exhibited better performance as compared to that using PBI binder.