A Study on the Optimization of Water Balance Control in the Intermittent PEM Fuel Cell

One of the water management goals in PEM fuel cell is to avoid flooding and drying in the membrane, therefore the air humidification process is required. In order to increase water removal out of the membrane, the water management system may require the dehumidification process and it also requires a large space for application, moreover the process time is slow. In conformity with this fact, this present study proposes an advanced dynamic fuel cell water management which can be an intermittent optimization control using air flow rate instead of the air humidity as an variable in the optimization process. The results of this study have shown that the membrane flooding and drying can be avoided after being assisted by air velocity controlling method.