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The fuel cell community has by now wholeheartedly accepted the notion of matched MEA components as necessary ingredients of fuel cell performance and durability equation. Considerable research has been conducted on optimizing the combined properties of the gas diffusion layer backing and microporous layer, catalyst and ionomer. The same logic seems to be quite universally applied to interplay between stack components and MEAs, but direct evidence as to why this would be so has not been researched or publicized widely. In this work we attempt to show such link does indeed exist, and to back up our claims with experimental data.

This paper communicates our work on the analysis of difficulties with and limitations of proper delivery of reactants to a fuel cell system that are the result of statistical uncertainties of settings of individual control and measurement devices in the control system. We attempt to set a statistics based groundwork for estimating uncertainties in actual fluid flow in fuel cell stack relative to desired flow set points, stoichiometries and size. Although only the fuel side of the test station that is particularly poorly matched to its test subject is analyzed in the presented example, the method is equally applicable to any control systems and to other pertinent fluids. Similar analysis can and should be performed during design stages of any control scheme for fuel cell systems. This work is most pertinent for (and was a direct response to challenges associated with) stack operation under extremely low stoichiometry conditions.

The structural data for sodium 2‐hydroxy‐5‐nitro­benzyl­sulfonate monohydrate, Na+·C7H6NO6S−·H2O, which mimics an artificial substrate for human aryl­sulfatase A, viz. p‐­nitrocatechol sulfate, reveal that the geometric parameters of the substrate and its analogue are very similar. Two water mol­ecules, the phenolic O atom and three sulfonate O atoms form the coordination sphere of the Na+ion, which is a distorted octahedron. The Na+cations and the O atoms join to form a chain polymer.