Description: Proton Exchange Membranes Fuel Cells: Thermodynamics, Electrochemistry, Component Design and Applications delivers a rigorous integration of thermodynamic and electrochemical principles underpinning Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFCs), Direct Methanol Fuel Cells (DMFCs), and PEM electrolyzers. The book addresses a critical pedagogical gap by uniting foundational irreversible thermodynamics, electrokinetics, and transport theory with practical materials science for real-world device design. It is intended for graduate-level students, researchers, and engineers who require quantitative frameworks to predict fuel-cell behavior, design high-conductivity ion-exchange membranes, and analyze coupled heat, mass, and charge transport in operational systems.
Part I develops the scientific foundations--thermodynamics, electrochemical kinetics, transport phenomena, membrane thermodynamics, and Nernst-Planck-based formulations of ionic motion and irreversible processes. Part II transitions to applied technologies, including membrane synthesis and characterization, nanocatalyst design with rotating disk and rotating ring-disk electrode diagnostics, membrane-electrode assembly (MEA) fabrication, bipolar-plate flow-field simulation, single-cell testing, PEM electrolyzer performance and hydrogen storage, and emerging microbial and plant-based fuel cell systems.Brief description: Vicente Compañ, PhD in Physics, is Full Professor of Applied Thermodynamics at the Polytechnic University of Valencia and Adjunct Professor (Ad Honorem). For over 20 years he has led research on transport properties of polymeric membranes, currently focusing on ion-exchange membranes for fuel cells and batteries. He has led 4 national and 7 regional research projects, acted as PI on 7 other national projects, and contributed to 5 more. His output includes 180+ papers and book chapters, 100+ conference presentations (including invited/keynote talks), over 3,600 citations and an h-index of 32. He has supervised five doctoral theses on membrane transport, dielectric spectroscopy, conductivity, relaxation phenomena and gas diffusion in polymers/hydrogels, and works on nanofiber-reinforced nanocomposites, electrochemical membrane characterization and applications in PEMFC, DMFC and PEM electrolyzers.