Mohammed Jourdani*, Hamid Mounir and Abdellatif El Marjani Department of Mechanical Engineering, Mohamed V University, Morocco *Corresponding author: Mohammed Jourdani, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Mohamed V University, Morocco, North Africa. Submission: April 11, 2018; Published: September 19, 2018 Modeling of Chemical Reacting Transport Phenomena in a PEM Fuel Cell using Finite Volume Method Introduction PEFC is a device that converts chemical energy in fuels directly into electricity with high efficiency, no combustion or moving parts [1]. PEMFC has many advantages, including clean, efficient and high-power density, etc., and it is regarded as an ideal power source for vehicles in the future [2,3]. Water management is one of the critical issues in the performance modeling of a PEMFC. At high cell current densities, excessive water transport throughout the membrane and water production in the cathode catalyst layer result in mass transport limitations and flooded GDL gas pores with water. At low cell current densities membrane dehydration may occurs at the anode side resulting in membrane ohmic losses. These losses cause reduction of the PEMFC performance. Modeling the transport phenomena in a fuel cell system is important to the development of fuel cells. Numerical models can be used to improve some important areas in PEMFCs design, such as water management, fuel cell thermal management, fuel cell stack design, and fuel delivery. Problem Description The computational domain is depicted in Figure 1. The model consists of gas channel, gas diffusion layer, cathode catalyst layer. The interfaces between the GDL and membrane are impregnated with a platinum catalyst and are called catalyst layer (CL). Mini Review 255 Copyright © All rights are reserved by Mohammed Jourdani. Volume - 2 Issue - 5 Progress in Petrochemical Science C CRIMSON PUBLISHERS Wings to the Research ISSN 2637-8035 Abstract Modeling the transport phenomena in a fuel cell system is important to the development of fuel cells. Numerical models can be used to improve some important areas in PEMFCs design, such as water management, fuel cell thermal management, fuel cell stack design, and fuel delivery. The purpose of this work is to present a two-dimensional transient model of the gas flow in the fuel cell (PEMFC). The model includes various conservation equations such movement and energy equations. The governing equations were resolved by the finite volume method. Keywords: Water; Modeling; Degradation; Performance; Finite volume method; PEMFC Figure 1: Structure of the diffusion layer.