An effective mesh strategy for CFD modelling of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells

Choopanya, Pattarapong; Yang, Zhiyin

doi:10.1016/j.ijhydene.2016.03.016

Cited by 16 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 21 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Basic assumptions are made to simplify the model and reduce calculation consumption: The surfaces of PEMFC and the gas inlet temperature are constantly at 80°C. The PEMFC is under steady state. The porosity and conductivity in porous zone (CLs and GDLs) are uniform and isotropic. The reactant gases are incompressible ideal gases. The laminar flow is supposed in the flow channel. …”

Section: Model Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation can provide detailed information of PEMFC that cannot be tested directly in the experiments, eg, distributions of the local current flux, gases concentration, temperature, and membrane conductivity. Consequently, many researchers have made great efforts to exploit CFD modeling of PEMFCs from one‐dimensional (1D), two‐dimensional (2D) to three‐dimensional (3D) . Nowadays, 3D numerical models are the mainstream to study the electrochemical and multiphysics processes of PEMFC.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Arvay et al proposed convergence criteria for 3D simulation of PEMFC. Choopanya and Yang presented a mesh strategy to reduce the number of mesh elements without sacrificing the simulation precision. Bednarek and Tsotridis presented a mitigation method to ensure that the simulation has correctly converged.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Consequently, many researchers have made great efforts to exploit CFD modeling of PEMFCs from one-dimensional (1D), [4][5][6][7] two-dimensional (2D) 8,9 to three-dimensional (3D). [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] Nowadays, 3D numerical models are the mainstream to study the electrochemical and multiphysics processes of PEMFC. For example, Cao et al 10 investigated the coupled water and heat management by a 3D, two-phase, and nonthermal model.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Analyze the effects of flow mode and humidity on PEMFC performance by equivalent membrane conductivity

Wei

Zhang

et al. 2019

Int J Energy Res

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Summary A three‐dimensional and two‐phase numerical model is developed for a 25‐cm2 proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) to investigate the effects of flow mode (coflow and counterflow) and relative humidity (anode 0%/100%; cathode 60%/100%) on the cell performance. Experimental studies are performed to validate this developed model. An equivalent membrane conductivity is proposed to describe the match level between current flux and membrane conductivity. It is found that the cell performance is enhanced under low relative humidity conditions because of the optimized equivalent membrane conductivity. More specifically, the voltage is improved from 0.611 to 0.637 V, and the equivalent membrane conductivity is enhanced from 10.35 to 11.11 S m−1 by replacing the coflow mode with counterflow mode at 1000 mA cm−2 when anode gas is dry and cathode gas is 100% hydrated. Both the anode and cathode relative humidities show an obvious influence on the PEMFC performance, and a suitable inlet humidity could ensure adequate hydration of membrane and avoid water flooding in gas diffusion layers simultaneously.

show abstract

Section: Model Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Analyze the effects of flow mode and humidity on PEMFC performance by equivalent membrane conductivity

Wei

Zhang

et al. 2019

Int J Energy Res

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Moreover, the demand and requirements of the fuel cells are increasing; there exists a high need for development and improvement of PEM‐FC performance and reducing its manufacturing and operating costs cheaper at the same time. CFD simulations for performance analysis of PEM fuel cells are gaining widespread recognition due to the ease of modelling a fuel cell as compared with its experimental implementation and near accurate prediction of the performance parameters . Thus, numerical analysis has been successfully used for prediction of flow, pressure, temperature distribution, and electrochemical reaction within a fuel cell as well as analyse of novel material and design of flow channel to further improve its performance characteristics.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of flow fields and humidification of reactant and oxidant on the performance of scaled‐up PEM‐FC using CFD code

Selvaraj

Rajagopal

2019

Int J Energy Res

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Summary The present study focuses on three‐dimensional two‐phase CFD investigation on scaled‐up proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEM‐FC) for an active area of 100 cm2 with different designs of serpentine and parallel flow configuration. The humidification of hydrogen and oxygen is varied from 10% to 100% to study the PEM‐FC performance. The numerical results of polarization curves predicted in this study have been numerically validated with that of the literature for both parallel and counter serpentine flow channels with active area of 24.8‐cm2 PEM‐FC. Further upon validation, the numerical study is extended for scaled‐up PEM‐FC with active area of 100 cm2 with different flow path designs to study its performance characteristics namely polarization curves, species concentration distribution, water content in the membrane electrolyte, and proton conductivity to evaluate the fuel cell performance. The three‐dimensional CAD models are created in SOLIDWORKS 10.0 and are discretised hexahedrally using finite volume method. The various governing equations namely conservation of mass, momentum, energy, species concentration, and electrochemical equations are solved numerically with the necessary boundary conditions using the CFD code. The novel design of straight zigzag flow path shows the better performance output over the other designs investigated which is having a higher power density of 0.3711 W/cm2 for 100% relative humidity of reactant and oxidant.

show abstract

Pressure Effect on the PEMFC Performance

Wei

Zhu

et al. 2019

Fuel Cells

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A three‐dimensional and two‐phase computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model for a single serpentine channel polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) based on ANSYS FLUENT fsimulation software is used to investigate the pressure effects on the PEMFC performance. The model is validated by a series of experiments and the numerical data fit well with the experiment results. The PEMFC performance is improved as the increase in back pressure. The simulation results revealed an important mechanism between pressure and humidity: a high back pressure could lead to a high relative humidity (RH) in cathode channel, which results in a high membrane water content. Based on this mechanism, the voltage increased by pressurization is divided into 2 parts: the voltage increased by reactants' partial pressure (Nernst potential) and the voltage increased by enhanced membrane water content. The comparison showed that the major benefit of pressurization is to keep adequate water in the membrane. The analysis of net power efficiency is also performed and it shows that the back pressure of 50 kPa is enough at low densities (less than 1,000 mA cm−2) and the back pressure of 100 kPa is needed at high densities (more than 1,000 mA cm−2).

show abstract

An effective mesh strategy for CFD modelling of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells

Cited by 16 publications

References 21 publications

Analyze the effects of flow mode and humidity on PEMFC performance by equivalent membrane conductivity

Analyze the effects of flow mode and humidity on PEMFC performance by equivalent membrane conductivity

Effect of flow fields and humidification of reactant and oxidant on the performance of scaled‐up PEM‐FC using CFD code

Pressure Effect on the PEMFC Performance

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About