Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells

This book presents in a very comprehensive manner the basic physical and mathematical laws that describe the electrochemical mechanisms that govern the performance of a proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). These laws are used to develop an equivalent electric transient model of a PEMFC suitable to be implemented in any commercially available electric circuit simulator software. In summary this book (1) looks into the history main characteristics classification advantages and applications of fuel cells; (2) explores different modeling approaches highlighting their most important contributions limitations and possible improvements; (3) describes the main components of a PEMFC and their functions; (4) provides basic notions about the electrokinetic processes in a PEMFC; (5) provides a set of equations and boundary conditions used to develop the equivalent electric transient model; (6) describes in detail the proposed equivalent electric transient model and its components; (7) presents conclusions and suggestions to improve the equivalent electric transient model and (8) shows the software code developed to post-process the data obtained experimentally.