Towards establishing scaling laws for PEM fuel cell scale-up design

'Full text:' It is well known that PEM fuel cell operates well when it is small in the active area and is operated in single cell, such as those used in laboratory testing; however, lower performance often results for either a similarly constructed large cell of practical significance or many cells stacked into a stack. Usual engineering upscale for product design does not seem to work properly for fuel cells, and a better understanding is needed for PEM fuel cell performance as a function of its size. It is also known that the flow field design on the bipolar plates can have significant impact on the performance and the reliability of PEM fuel cells. Therefore, in this study a comprehensive measurement has been carried out for PEM fuel cell performance as a function of its sizes and for various flow field designs appropriate for the cell sizes investigated, and attempts have been made to conduct suitable analysis of the data acquired in order to find possible scaling laws that might be used for engineering scale-up design of PEM fuel cells. Such scaling laws will be useful for the design of appropriate PEM fuel cells of different sizes for different practical applications, hence will be particularly useful for fuel cell industry. (author)