Abstract
In recent years, destruction of global environment and depletion of fossil fuels have become more serious. The fuel cells have been regarded as one of the promising candidates for the next generation power sources because of their clean and efficient characteristic. More recently, anion exchange membrane fuel cell (AEMFC) has been attracting attention because it can potentially do away with the expensive Pt catalyst. However, it is probably more necessary to take water management into consideration in order to avoid performance deterioration in AEMFC. In this paper, the relationship between water balance and current density distribution in AEMFC was focused. A test single fuel cell was manufactured to measure current density distribution and to visualize the movement of generated water on the GDL at the same time. The results showed that the gradient of current density in AEMFC was greater than that in PEMFC in all the experimental conditions.
