A novel water content sensor design and its application for in-situ water content measurement inside the flow channel of PEMFC

In-situ water content detection in proton exchange fuel cell (PEMFC) is of great importance to its water management. In this study, flexible thin film water content microsensor (WCMS) were fabricated and deployed for real-time measurement of water distribution inside the channel of proton exchange membrane fuel cells. The effect of inserting WCMS on the cell performance was confirmed to be negligible. Besides, three WCMS were used to monitor the variation of water distribution in the upstream, midstream, and downstream of the flow channel, respectively. The experimental results show that the WCMS can efficiently detect the change of water content inside the fuel cell in real time. The co-occurrence phenomenon of water column clogging in the flow channel and degradation of cell performance were observed. This work provides a novel design of WCMS and its application on the water content distribution inside flow channel of fuel cells.