Experimental Evaluation of CO Poisoning of a 5-Cell Stack High Temperature PEM Fuel Cell Prototype

In this study, we experimentally studied our newly designed and built 5-cell stack high temperature PEM fuel cell prototype at different operating conditions to investigate the effects of CO poisoning on the cell performance. The effects of temperature variations with different amount of CO poisoning on the current-voltage characteristics of the fuel cell stack are investigated. Experimental data of this type would be very useful to develop design parameters for fuel reformer. The high CO tolerance of high temperature PEM fuel cell stack makes it possible to feed the reformate gas directly from the reformer without further CO removal. Thus, upon considering the fact that a steam reformer is a consumer of heat and water, and the fuel cell stacks are a producer of heat and water, the integration of the fuel cell stack and the reformer is expected to improve the entire system performance. The results obtained from our 5-cell stack test showed variations in current-voltage characteristics at different temperatures with different CO poisoning rates. The results are promising to understand the overall system performance development strategy of high temperature PEM fuel cell in terms of current-voltage characteristics while fed with on-site reformate hydrogen gas with different CO concentrations in the anode feed stream