Optimum design of the slotted-interdigitated channels flow field for proton exchange membrane fuel cells with consideration of the gas diffusion layer intrusion (original) (raw)
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International Research Journal of Modernization in Engineering Technology and Science, 2020
Polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs have attracted worldwide scientists to research to apply them for stationary fuel-cell or portable fuel-cell applications. May previous studies results showed that the PEMFCs performance is affected by many parameters such as flow-field design, boundary conditions, environmental humidity. Among those, the flow-field design is the main critical and design issue of PEM fuel cells because it directly affects the gas distribution as well as water discharge. If the membrane is to dry, it causes an increase of resistive loss. Otherwise, if the water flooding happens in the cathode, it will block the channels and causes the performance reduction. Thus, the optimization of the membrane water content is essential to ensure the optimal operation of a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell system. Also, water management is deeply influenced by flow field design. This paper shows the numerical analysis of the effect of flow-field design on fuel cell performance. The results of this design are the foundation for optimizing the design in order to enhance fuel cell performance.
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This research was studied to design of flow field on Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell for distributions in reaction gas. The design of flow field was studied the effects of channel configurations of flow field plates on the performance of a PEMFC. Effects of widths, length and curve channel of a flow field plate were studied in an effort to optimize the dimensions of channel. It was assumed that the development of these design techniques with CFD will require. This study used three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model was investigated the effects of serpentine flow channel designs on the performance of proton exchange membrane fuel cells. This model was validated by the experiments. The numerical results were provided understanding the effect of flow field pattern design on performance of the fuel cell. This led us to a better design of gas flow field, which improves the gas distribution and water management. This research will investigate the relationship between ...
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In this work, the performance of Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFCs) with interdigitated gas distributor under clamping pressure is numerically studied. A threedimensional model of PEMFC has been developed and used to study the effect of displacement and deformation caused by clamping pressure on the transport phenomena and device performance. The influence of different parameters such as gas diffusion layer porosity, permeability, thickness, Poisson ratio, and density on the performance of a fuel cell with interdigitated gas distributor on both anode and cathode sides is studied. Obtained results show that there is an optimum range for clamping pressure, caused by assembly force, in which PEMFC performance is in its maximum state. This range depends on the thickness of the gas diffusion layer. The optimum clamping pressures for the thickness of 0.11, 0.254, and 0.37 mm are 395 kPa, 696 kPa, and 1101 kPa, respectively. Furthermore, our findings reveal that the optimum clamping pressure improves the temperature distribution in the fuel cell with the interdigitated flow field. Studying the distribution of water saturation at the cathode catalyst layer demonstrates that the higher the clamping pressure, the lower the water volume fraction and consequently the lower fuel cell performance.
Performance Investigation of Proton‐Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell with Dean Flow Channels
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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.
The Effect of Flow Field Design Parameters on the Performance of PEMFC: A Review
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Proton exchange membrane fuel cell is essentially utilized to generate energy with zero emission. There are many drawbacks in PEMFC, such as the mal-distribution of reactants, water management between the catalyst layer and the GDL, and the mass transport issue of reactants. Flow field design parameters can overcome these problems to improve cell performance. Where the flow field is an essential element of the fuel cell, and it is designed to provide the required amount of both hydrogen and oxygen with the lowest possible pressure drop on the anode and cathode sides, respectively. In this paper, the cell performance with different flow field design parameters, such as conventional flow field configuration, nature-inspired flow field configuration, and geometric parameters, as well as their modifications, is reviewed in detail. It has been demonstrated through the current review paper that the flow field design parameters can significantly affect the overall behavior of PEMFC, and ea...
IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering, 2020
The flow-field design is an essential key in the operation of fuel cells, it conducts main functions such as contributing reactants to the membrane electrolyte assembly (MEA) over gas diffusion layers, conductive part, clamping MEA as well as water management & thermal management and so on. As a result, it is necessary to optimize the flow-field design of fuel cells in order to enhance fuel cell operation characteristics. This paper shows numerical analyses of fuel cell characteristics based on 4 configurations of flow-field in order to find out the best design for enhancing fuel cell performance. The results showed that the different design of flow-field for the anode side and the cathode side can contribute to enhancing fuel cell operation characteristics due to their difference in water formation and discharge. Indeed, the fuel cell configuration with the serpentine flow field in anode side and the pin flow field in the cathode side is the best design because it leads to reducing...
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.
Transactions of FAMENA, 2019
Performance of the proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell depends on the operating pressure, operating temperature, stoichiometric ratio of reactant gases, relative humidity, and rib width-to-channel width ratio (R:C), shape of the flow channel, and the number of passes on the flow channel. The effect of pressure, temperature, inlet reactant mass flow rate and rib width-to-channel width ratios of 1:1, 1:2, 2:1, and 2:2 on the power density of a PEM fuel cell with interdigitated flow channel of 25 cm 2 active area of was considered in this study. The response surface methodology was used for optimizing the four above mentioned parameters to find the optimum power density of the PEM fuel cell. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to find the contribution of each parameter to the performance of the PEM fuel cell. Further, numerical results were compared with the experimental validation of the PEM fuel cell. Numerical results of power densities of interdigitated flow channel with R:C ratios of 1:1, 1:2, 2:1, and 2:2 were found to be 0.272, 0.292, 0.267, and 0.281 W/cm 2 and the corresponding experimental results of power density were 0.261, 0.266, 0.254, and 0.264 W/cm 2 , respectively.
International Journal of Energy Research, 2008
Experiments and simulations are presented in this paper to investigate the effects of flow channel patterns on the performance of proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). The experiments are conducted in the Fuel Cell Center of Yuan Ze University and the simulations are performed by way of a three-dimensional full-cell computational fluid dynamics model. The flow channel patterns adopted in this study include the parallel and serpentine flow channels with the single path of uniform depth and four paths of step-wise depth, respectively. Experimental measurements show that the performance (i.e. cell voltage) of PEMFC with the serpentine flow channel is superior to that with the parallel flow channel, which is precisely captured by the present simulation model. For the parallel flow channel, different depth patterns of flow channel have a strong influence on the PEMFC performance. However, this effect is insignificant for the serpentine flow channel. In addition, the calculated results obtained by the present model show satisfactory agreement with the experimental data for the PEMFC performance under different flow channel patterns. These validations reveal that this simulation model can supplement the useful and localized information for the PEMFC with confidence, which cannot be obtained from the experimental data.
Numerical Study and Optimisation of Channel Geometry and Gas Diffusion Layer of a PEM Fuel Cell
ASME 2012 10th International Conference on Fuel Cell Science, Engineering and Technology, 2012
Fuel cell technology offers a promising alternative to conventional fossil fuel energy sources. Proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC) in particular have become sustainable choice for the automotive industries because of its low pollution, low noise and quick start-up at low temperatures. Researches are on-going to improve its performance and reduce cost of this class of energy systems. In this work, a novel approach to optimise proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell gas channels in the systems bipolar plates with the aim of globally optimising the overall system net power performance at minimised pressure drop and subsequently low pumping power requirement for the reactant species gas was carried out. In addition, the effect of various gas diffusion layer (GDL) properties on the fuel cell performance was examined. Simulations were done ranging from 0.6 to 1.6 mm for channel width, 0.5 to 3.0 mm for channel depth and 0.1 to 0.7 for the GDL porosity. A gradient based optimisation algorithm is implemented which effectively handles an objective function obtained from a computational fluid dynamics simulation to further enhance the obtained optimum values of the examined multiple parameters for the fuel cell system. The results indicate that effective match of reactant gas channel and GDL properties enhance the performance of the fuel cell system. The numerical results computed agree well with experimental data in the literature. Consequently, the results obtained provide useful information for improving the design of fuel cells.