A pseudo-3D model to investigate heat and water transport in large area PEM fuel cells – Part 1: Model development and validation

•Multiphysics model for local conditions prediction in each cell component.•Reactive gases and cooling flow fields design included in the model.•Current density, temperature and species concentration distributions in large cell surface area.•Printed circuit board measurement device for model validation.•Pseudo-3D approximation to reduce computational cost.

Understanding heat and water transport in proton exchange membrane fuel cells is an important issue to overcome the barriers of performance limitation and lifetime. Due to the low precision and invasiveness of measurement techniques, high performance numerical models are needed. In this study, a hybrid physic-based model is developed to investigate temperature, humidity and current density heterogeneities in a large area PEM fuel cell (220 cm2). The model considers the cell as a multi-layered system, each layer being accurately in-plane discretized to allow the simulation of local heterogeneities. To reduce the computational cost, the transport equations are formulated using a pseudo-3D approximation and coupled to an analytical electrochemical model at the catalyst layers/membrane interface. The model is validated experimentally against measured data obtained from a printed circuit board.