Now days fuel cells became one of the most promising energy technologies. Several factors are driving the growing interest in this technology. In addition to their zero pollution and high performance, they can be the solution to the problem of limited reserves of fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, coal). Modeling the different phenomena occurring in proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) plays an important role in this development and performance. Recent studies on the compilation of factors affecting durability and performance of PEMFC indicate that the performance of PEMFC is strongly depending on the performance of its membrane. Hence, several parameters, such as pressure, temperature, geometry of cell, and conductivity, affect the performance of membrane. Further, ion conductivity resistance decreases as the membrane thickness decreases. In fact, the best conductivity of membrane leads to good performance of PEMFC. Further, existing studies indicate that parameter of membrane thickness strongly affects the conductivity of membrane. In this paper, a 3D model will investigate the performance of proton exchange membrane fuel cell under different thicknesses of membrane.

modeling, fuel cell PEM, membrane, performance, experimental validation, mathematical model.