Study of Thermal Contact Resistance of PEMFC Interface Between Gas Diffusion Backing Layer and Bipolar Plate

Heat is one of the critical factors that cause a rapid decline in proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) performance and life. Before taking measures, it is necessary to deeply understand fuel cell internal heat transfer behavior. Numerical simulation is currently the primary tool of research in this field, but the incorrect thermal parameters in the model bring great uncertainty to the prediction results. Besides, due to the small size of materials, research on the measurement of the thermal parameter is still insufficient. Therefore, in this work, we develop a method to measure the thermal contact resistance (TCR) between a gas diffusion backing layer and a bipolar plate based on the one-dimensional steady-state heat conduction principle. At the same time, the influences of newly measured TCR and literature adopted data on fuel cell internal temperature distribution are analyzed by our previously developed two-phase PEMFC thermal model. The results indicate that under the compression pressures of 0.2–1.29 MPa, the TCR ranges from 7.6 to 2.6 × 10−5 m2 K W−1 and decreases with load pressure. Moreover, previous studies have overestimated the TCR, resulting in higher fuel cell internal temperature and lower membrane water content, which causes poor fuel cell performance. These findings can provide method and parameter guidance for researching the water and thermal state within PEMFC.