Performance Study of Proton Exchange Fuel Cells for Different Atmospheric Conditions

With the growing concerns of the CO
₂
emission and global warming there has been a great focus on the renewable source of energy. Fell cell is a promising technology to have clean, efficient and reliable power generation in this era. Proton exchange fuel cells (PEFC) converts the chemical energy stored in fuel to electrical energy without any combustion. PEFC which use hydrogen(H
₂
) as fuel in the presence of atmospheric air and produce only water as byproduct. The efficiency of fuel cell is much higher the other sources such as IC engine. Fuel cell have potential to reduce our dependence over the fossil fuel and to reduce in emission of greenhouse gases and air pollution. In recent days, PEFC is used in electric base vehicle, in satellite and as generator at remote are because to refill H
₂
fuel tank, it takes few minutes as compare to charging a high-power equivalent battery. Therefore, major automobile companies are manufacturing electrical vehicle based on PEFC. Performance of fuel cell highly depends on the ambient atmospheric conditions such as pressure, partial pressure of gases, temperature, humidity and other factors. With higher altitude these is a clear decrease in performance of PEFC due to mainly decrease in air density, temperature of air. In this paper we have studied the effect of the different altitude level on the operation, membrane reaction and efficiency of proton exchange fuel cell.