Analytical Investigation and Optimization of the Hydrogen PEM Fuel Cell Stack Performance for Various Ambient and Operating Conditions

2025-28-0357

To be published on 10/30/2025

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Optimization of the operating conditions for the proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is a challenging part as these are multi-input problems, however optimization is essential to achieve maximum stack efficiency, cost and weight reduction, and fuel utilization. In this article, variance analysis is performed over 13 input parameters to get the most influential parameters that can affect the fuel cell performance. The input parameters considered in this study are operating pressure, operating temperature, anode stoichiometry, cathode stoichiometry, anode relative humidity, cathode relative humidity, GDL thickness, GDL porosity, membrane thickness, channel width, channel depth, platinum loading and coating specific area. First, analytical investigations carried out for different ambient conditions (pressure, temperature and relative humidity), operating conditions for anode and cathode (such as Anode stoichiometry, Cathode stoichiometry, pressure, temperature, relative humidity) to obtain the cell performance which includes the polarization curve, power density and activation loss. Here, the optimization is carried out to get the maximum power density from the fuel cell stack. The results indicate that the optimization of input parameters can lead to the better performance of the PEMFC as compared to the base operating condition (25 ℃ and 1 atm). Through this optimization technique several Pareto solutions can be generated in less time, which can guide the engineers to select the appropriate operating conditions for a fuel cell to get better performance.
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Panda, S., Sahu, T., and Bansode, A., "Analytical Investigation and Optimization of the Hydrogen PEM Fuel Cell Stack Performance for Various Ambient and Operating Conditions," SAE Technical Paper 2025-28-0357, 2025, .
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Published
To be published on Oct 30, 2025
Product Code
2025-28-0357
Content Type
Technical Paper
Language
English