Experimental and CFD studies on using coil wire insert in a proton exchange membrane fuel cell (original) (raw)
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Transport phenomena effect on the performance of proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC)
International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, 2013
Performance Finite volume method PEMFC a b s t r a c t The aim of this work is to present a two-dimensional transient model, of heat and mass transfer in a proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). The model includes various conservation equations such as mass (hydrogen, oxygen, water concentration), Momentum and energy equations this model is combined with the electrochemical model. The objective of this work is to know the hydrogen, oxygen water concentration, temperature and pressure to determine the performance conditions of the fuel cell under the current density and permeability effect. A program based on the finite volume method was performed to simulate these equations system. The numerical results show that the gas distribution in the assembly membrane electrode (MEA) and the power density is affected by the nature of porous middle (permeability).
Design and analysis of a proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC)
Renewable Energy, 2013
Flow distribution of both fuel and oxidant from the port to the individual cells critically control the performance of a PEMFC stack in combination. The low voltage generated in a fuel cell is compounded to usable value by stacking of cells. Under ideal conditions, a fuel cell stack performance is simply the sum of the performance of individual cells. However, this linear correlation is not achieved in practice. This is due to many reasons including poor distribution of reactants among different cells of the stack. Due to this flow mal-distribution, if the highest flow rate is adjusted at design value, other cells starve for fuel. Whereas, if the lowest flow rate is adjusted at the design value, other cells waste away the fuel. Hence, there is need to have accurate study of flow mal-distribution in a fuel cell and take remedial measures to reduce loss of output due to this flow deficiency. We present in this paper our efforts in this direction by simulating the distribution of fluids by analytical approach utilizing flow channeling model of a manifold to increase the power output of the fuel cell stack.
Performance studies on serpentine flow channel of a proton exchange membrane fuel cell
IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering, 2018
The results of the experimental investigations on the performance of a Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) with serpentine flow field is reported in the present work. The serpentine flow channel considered in the present work has an active area of 50 cm 2 and has a landing to channel ratio of 1:1. The power densities at various operating temperatures are determined experimentally. The testing is done on the PEMFC for three different temperatures: 50, 60 and 70ºC. The output power at a particular cell voltage has been found to increase as the temperature increases. The maximum power obtained is 23.01 W at 0.48 V when the cell operating temperature is 70ºC. In order to characterize the nafion membrane, a scanning electron microscope analysis is also performed and the results are reported in the present paper.
This research is to study the gas distribution within the Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) that using the homebuilt developed flow field. This flow field combines curve header together with parallel-serpentine in order to extend the reaction area. A 3D numerical modeling of PEMFC was set up and solved by using commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software, the "CFDRC ® ". The affect of gas flow field on the gas distribution caused by the chemical reaction inside the fuel cell were numerically studied. The result shows the developed flow field has the density of electric power about 81.25 mA/cm 2 and the conventional flow field fuel cell is about 69.22 mA/cm 2 which is better around 17.5%. From the test of developed fuel cell with the temperature and the flow rate, found that at the work in temperature; 50 o C and the flow rate at 150 sccm gave the best density of electric power.
Renewable Energy, 2011
The design of the flow field greatly affects the flow distribution and the final performance of the proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) system. The clamping force between the gas diffusion layer (GDL) and the flow field plate (FFP) will cause the inhomogeneous compression of the GDL. Then the GDL will be intruded into the reactant gas channels and eventually change the flow distribution. This paper presents a study on the effect of the intrusion of the GDL on the flow field in a PEMFC, and tries to explain the reason for poor performance of the previous design of the flow field other than those have been studied in other papers such as GDL roughness, porosity, etc. First of all, a linear analytical model is used to analyze the sensitivities of the flow field to the GDL intrusion, and then used to estimate the effect of the GDL intrusion on the flow field distribution. Secondly, a multi-objective optimization model is proposed to eliminate the nonuniform distribution in the flow field with the GDL intrusion taken into consideration. Subsequently, three different designs are analyzed and compared with each other as a demonstration to show the effect of the GDL intrusion. From the analysis results, it is recommended that the effect of the GDL intrusion on the multi-depth flow field should be taken into consideration and the flow field should be insensitive to the GDL intrusion to obtain high robust performance. The results obtained in the study provide the designer some useful guidelines in the concept design of flow field configurations.
A theoretical model for analysis of proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell is proposed. The membrane used in proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell is of many different kind of materials. The Membrane has specific properties like proton conductivity, humidity and thickness which affect the performance of the PEM fuel cell. The proposed model is studied the effects of thickness and conductivity of membrane on the performance of the PEM fuel cell. The model has been validated with the experimental results trends and also the comparisons shows there is good agreement between the experimental data trends and the proposed model.
Performance Investigation of Proton‐Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell with Dean Flow Channels
Energy technology, 2022
A intersectant flow field on metal bipolar plate was proposed to improve the efficiency of proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method was employed to optimize the detailed constructions of flow channel. Polarization curve, current density distribution, oxygen distribution and water mass distribution were introduced as the criterions to assist the optimization of proposed flow field. A test system for PEMFC was assembled. The optimal operating parameters of PEMFC test were also proposed. The single serpentine flow field was introduced as the reference to estimate the efficiency of novel flow field. Results showed the optimal flow channel depth and porosity of the intersectant flow field were 0.3 mm and 0.5, respectively. The optimal operating parameters were also obtained based on testing experiments, i.e. the hydrogen flow 300 ml/min, air flow 500 ml/min and operating temperature 80°C. The comparison tests of the two flow fields released that the performance of the intersectant flow field was indeed better than the single serpentine flow field.
Performance effects of proton exchange membrane fuel cell at various operating temperatures
Performance effects of proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) at various temperatures of the gases feeding the electrodes were investigated. Experiments have been carried out on two different homemade PEMFCs with hydrogen/oxygen and hydrogen/air feed. On each PEMFC with different feed that have an active area of 9 cm 2 Nafion™ NE-1035 as proton exchange membrane (PEM) and electrodes with platinum load of 0.9 mg/cm 2 were used. Temperature of humidified gases in 1 atm pressure that feed the PEMFCs kept at ambient temperature (25 o C) varies from ambient temperature to 95 o C by 10 o C step. During the experiment backpressures of each type of the PEMFCs held constant at 1 atm and the external load resistance (RL) varies from 0 to 1000 K. In high temperatures the diffusivity of gases increase and mass transport resistance decrease. However, the ion-conductivity of the PEM in ohmic region increases. As a result it was concluded that performance of the PEMFCs depends on the concentration of gases and on the discharge of water (H2O) content formed by electro-chemical reactions.
The simulation of novel annular shape on the performance in proton exchange membrane fuel cell
Hydrogen, Fuel Cell & Energy Storage, 2014
In this article, one-phase and three dimensional computational fluid dynamics analysis was utilized to investigate the effect of annular field pattern of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC) with different geometry on the performances and species distribution. This computational fluid dynamics code is used for solving the equation in single domain namely the flow field, the mass conservation, the energy conservation, the species transport, and the electric/ionic fields under the assumptions of steady state and non-isothermal. The introduced cell consist of different novelties, such as the way in which reactant gases are supplied to the flow field, the design of the flow field geometry for both anode and cathode and the membrane electrode assembly design and the length and occupied volume decreases up to 40%. Obtained results showed that generation of fuel cells with annular shaped geometry with the same active area and inlet area gave intensively higher current density compared with conventional model. Oxygen, hydrogen and water mass fraction distributions, current density and temperature distribution has been studied. The main factors that affect the behavior of each of the curves are discussed comprehensively. Intorduced configuration allows for better flow distribution and uses of the maximum active area and diffusion from two side in each channels. Furthermore, the effect of changing the GDL thickness is presented in order to understand the effect of different parameters. Simulation results were compared with the experimental data and confirm the accuracy of model.