Ecological Performance of an Irreversible Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell

In this paper a novel PEMFC voltage model considering the leakage current is established. Numerical simulation results based on the newly established PEMFC model is compared with the experimental results and indicates that they have a good match with the experimental results. Based on the proposed voltage model and previous studies, the PEMFC ecological criterion was proposed and derived. As well, other finite time thermodynamics objective functions including entropy yield, ecological objective function and ecological performance coefficient formula are derived for PEMFCs. Detailed numerical simulations are performed considering different design parameters and operating parameters. Ecological performance of an irreversible PEMFC is gained and such results can be further used for ecological optimization to yield maximum performance of the PEMFC.