Abstract
Water management is one of the most important factors in efficient operation of a polymer electrolyte fuel cell, which is now actively under development aiming at practical application to home cogeneration systems, automobiles and mobile machines. This paper describes the influence of cell posture, humidity and utilization factor of supplied gases, and duration time of operation on the fuel cell performance of power generation in terms of water management. A test single cell with open channel separators and transparent endplates was specially manufactured to visualize moisture generation and two-phase flow in the anode and cathode channels of the cell. The results show that the amount of condensed water in the channels greatly varies with operating conditions and directly links to the cell performance of power generation.
