One key issue in high temperature polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (HT-PEMFC) stack development is heat removal at the operating temperature of 140-180 degrees C. Conventionally, this process is done using coolants such as thermooil, steam or pressurized water. In this contribution, external liquid cooling designs are described, which are avoiding two constraints. First, in the cell active area, no liquid coolant is present avoiding any sealing problems with respect to the electrode. Secondly, the external positioning allows high temperature gradients between the heat removal zone and the active area resulting in a good adjustability of appropriate reformate conversion temperatures (e.g. 160 degrees C) and a more compact cell design. Different design concepts were investigated using modeling techniques and a selection of them has also been investigated experimentally. The experiments proved the feasibility of the external cooling design and showed that the temperature gradients within the active area are below 15 K under typical operating conditions. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.