Parametric study of a proton exchange membrane compressor for electrochemical hydrogen storage using numerical assessment

Abstract

This paper investigates a single cell proton exchange membrane based electrochemical hydrogen compressor for hydrogen storage purposes. This work applies a three-dimensional numerical model based on single-domain method in order to simulate the thermal and electrochemical kinetics of the electrochemical cell. The design parameters including operating temperature, pressure, the thickness and porosity of the gas diffusion layer, and channel dimension affect the electrochemical hydrogen compression cell performance. The results show that the performance of the cell improves by increasing the operating temperature at high current density, but it has a negligible effect within the activation region. Increase of pressure from 1 bar to 20 bar at the current density of 5000 A m−2 reduces the overall cell voltage by almost 24% and the cell performance deteriorates. The results indicate that increase of gas diffusion layer thickness from 0.2 to 0.5 mm has a negative effect on the performance of electrochemical cell. Moreover, a comparison between different gas diffusion layer porosities shows no significant effect on the polarization curve due to the high permeability of hydrogen. Furthermore, the required voltage will be grown in the range of 87.84 -70.61 mV by varying the channel rib in the range of 0.5 -1 mm. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd