Experimental Study on Anode and Cathode Pressure Difference Control and Effects in a Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell System

In a proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) system, controlling the pressure balance between the anode and the cathode reactants is very important, especially for transient processes involving big load changes. Unreasonable pressure following the control may lead to pressure imbalance, which may result in damage to the thin membranes inside the fuel cell stack. A pressure difference control method for maintaining the pressure difference on both sides of the membrane within a reasonable scope is proposed in this paper. This method is also applied in an actual PEMFC system for pressure-balance control. In the experiments involving a 14.4 kW PEMFC system with 100 A current jumps, the pressure difference between the anode hydrogen and cathode air could be controlled within allowable values. The results reveal that the proposed method can be used to control the anode inlet pressure more simply and rapidly following the cathode pressure changes, which could be more effective for membrane protection.