Development and application of fuel cell technology will be increased significantly through analysis and improvement of the heat transfer in the fuel cell stack and auxiliary components and by implementation of innovative heat transfer schemes that address those issues. A detailed review of these problems related to fuel cell technology, including recently developing challenges, is presented. Current technical limitations can be overcome through a combination of novel methodologies, increased efficiency of components, decreased component size and mass, and detailed modeling. This paper also outlines the existing fuel cell technologies and developers, fuel cell models, and unresolved issues in fuel cell modeling. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.