Numerical simulation study on operation characteristics of PEMFC in low temperature environment

When the proton exchange membrane fuel cell is used as a power source device to operate in a low temperature environment, the cell will have a series of problems such as difficulty in starting due to the overall low temperature, reduced output performance, and reduced life. External heating agent heating is one of the important methods to solve the above problems. In this paper, based on the most commonly used rectangular DC channel fuel cell model, a numerical simulation method is used to analyze the effect of different temperature heating agents on the continuous output performance of the cell at an ambient temperature of 253.15 K. By analyzing the cell polarization curve, temperature, material distribution, and current density under four operating conditions, it was found that the addition of an external heating agent helps to improve the output performance of the cell in a low-temperature environment. Among them, the optimization effect is most obvious when the temperature of the heating agent is 313.15 K in the studied temperature range.