Panasonic Corporation

Yukinobu Kitano

Kazuhito Hatoh

Yasushi Sugawara

Junji Morita

Soichi Shibata

Takayuki Urata

Takahiro Umeda

A fuel cell system includes a fuel cell that is subjected to a purge operation of supplying an inert gas to an anode and/or cathode upon shut-down of the fuel cell. The differential pressure &#x394;P is defined as &#x394;P=Pa&#x2212;Pc where Pa is the pressure in an inlet-side flow path leading to the anode and Pc is the pressure in an inlet-side flow path leading to the cathode. The differential pressure during the purge operation is controlled such that the differential pressure during operation &#x394;Po and the differential pressure during the purge operation &#x394;Pp satisfy the relation: 0&#x3c;&#x394;Po&#xd7;&#x394;Pp. This makes it possible to reduce the stress exerted on a solid electrolyte membrane and improve the long-term reliability of the fuel cell.

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Hirakata, Japan

Yukinobu Kitano