An Empirical Study about the Segmented Cell in Anode Side of PEMFC

The present study focused on the segmented cell which has the similar performance to unaltered (not segmented) cell in real operating condition. Many literatures have been made the segmented cell to observe the behavior of local current density distribution in the single cell. However, it has been lack of scheme to segment the cell in that the detailed interpretation of segmenting in analytic point of view was insufficient. Hence, the basic idea of segmenting was introduced to determine the component to be segmented in anode side of unit cell. The electrical contact/bulk resistance was measured by using four wire/probe method through each part of cell components including MEA, GDL, Bipolar Plate and Current Collector. Electron transport mechanism was predicted by comparing resistance values which were obtained from the experiment. As a result, this offered a great benefit to segment the cell efficiently. With this method further experiments would be conducted in research areas which require current density distribution at the same operating condition as unaltered cell.