In order to accomplish the objective of studying and optimizing the flow channel geometries and dimensions for high-temperature proton-exchange-membrane (PEM) fuel cells (with operating temperatures above 120°C), a mathematical model has been developed in this work. As the major step of the modeling, the average concentrations of gas species in bulk flows as well as in the layers of electrodes are calculated through mass transfer analysis in one-dimensional direction normal to the membrane-electrodes layers. Therefore, the concentration and activation polarizations are simulated with much less computational work compared to a three-dimensional numerical model. The ohmic loss is taken into consideration through analysis of a representative network circuit simulating the electron and proton conduction in the elements of electrodes and electrolyte, respectively. The simulated results for high-temperature PEM fuel cells were compared with experimental results from literature. The results from the simulation and experimental tests showed good agreement, which validated the mathematical model. As the model requires less computational work, it was used to analyze a large number of cases with different gas flow channel dimensions and operating conditions, and optimization to the dimensions of channels and ribs was accomplished.
This paper presents a novel architecture for a proton-exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell stack, which is based on the concept that every cell in the stack works at the same condition and thus each cell has the same contribution to the overall output voltage and power. To meet this proposed requirement, special flow distributors were used to evenly distribute fuel and airflow to every fuel cell in the stack. Details of the flow distributor and experimental tests of a four-cell fuel cell stack are presented in the paper. The experimental results demonstrated the desired high performance of the fuel cell stack. It is proved that the novel architecture for fuel cell stack is successful and of significance to the development of high performance fuel cell stacks.
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