NUMERIAL INVESTIGATION OF THERMODIFFUSION EFFECTS ON PEM FUEL CELL PERFORMANCE

An increasing amount of attention has been paid on the study of thermodiffusion effects on mass transport. This paper presents a novel mathematical model for an entire proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) with focus placed on the modeling and assessment of the role of thermodiffusion that has been usually neglected in previous fuel cell research work. Built upon the equations of continuity, momentum, energy, species concentrations, and electric potentials in different regions of a PEMFC, a set of nonlinear partial differential equations are numerically solved using finite element methods. The simulation results demonstrate that the thermodiffusion has a noticeable impact on transport of species in an operational PEMFC.