To reduce environmental concerns and oil dependence, polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFC) appear as promising energy conversion devices. In order to achieve high performances, water management in the PEMFC is one of the main critical issues to address. Excess humidification (flooding) and the lack of humidification (drying) are harmful to the PEMFC. Hence, the aim of this work is to analyse different gases feeding strategies (dead-end and flow-through modes of hydrogen supply) regarding the inlet gases humidifications.

A pseudo 2D transient PEMFC model has been developed. This model describes multi-component gas transport in the electrodes, water transport in the membrane and computes the cell potential. In this work, it is assumed that optimal internal humidification conditions are reached when liquid water appears at the center of the cell along the channel direction. Indeed, according to the literature, this is a good compromise between drying at the inlet and flooding near the outlet. The optimum inlet gases humidifications are computed for different feeding gases strategies. The membrane water content profiles are also analysed to show membrane resistance variations.

By adjusting the cathode inlet humidification, almost the same cell performances can be reached in dead-end mode with no anode humidification than in hydrogen flow-through mode with anode humidification (figure 1). Therefore, the fuel cell systems could be greatly simplified by removing hydrogen recirculation and humidification devices.