Numerical investigation of enhanced mass transfer flow field on performance improvement of high‐temperature proton exchange membrane fuel cell

Abstract

The enhanced mass transfer flow fields have been proven to be an effective measure to improve the cell performance of low-temperature proton exchange membrane fuel cells, yet little research has been done for high-temperature proton exchange membrane fuel cells (HT-PEMFC). In this work, three types of cathode-enhanced mass transfer flow fields (tapered, staggered-blocked, and blocked) are designed. The effects of various flow fields on the reactant delivery, current density distribution uniformity, and net power output of HT-PEMFC are quantitatively investigated and compared. It is found that the three enhanced mass transfer flow fields can effectively increase the performance of HT-PEMFC by transforming the traditional diffusion into a combination of diffusion and forced convection. In the sight of the superior performance and lower flow resistance, the tapered flow field is thought to be the optimal candidate for HT-PEMFC among the four flow fields, with a 12.21% net power increment and 5.32% current density distribution uniformity improvement at 1.4 A/cm 2 compared to the conventional flow field. These results support further performance enhancements and applications of HT-PEMFC.

Impact of separator thickness on relationship between temperature distribution and mass & current density distribution in single HT-PEMFC

“…The results and discussions using the model have been recognized by the reviewers of these journals. In addition, the commercial software COMSOL applied in this study was used in many previous studies and their results were validated well [14,15,18,27,28,44,45] . Therefore, the model was thought to be validated.…”

“…The COMSOL Multiphysics has a simulation function code consisting of Brinkman formula, Maxwell-Stefan formula, Butler-Volmer formula and heat transfer formula considering the heat generated by over-potentials, thermal conduction through each component in the cell and thermal convection via the flow through the channel as well as transferring from the exhaust gas to the ambient air. Some researchers previously carried out the numerical simulation using COMSOL Multiphysics for HT-PEMFC [4,14,15,[25][26][27][28] and achieved good results for the temperature, gases and current density distributions. In addition, the validation was conducted well.…”

The impact of baffle and taper channel tilt angle on the output performance of proton‐exchange membrane fuel cells

“…The optimization design of flow field structure constitutes a pivotal aspect of water management. Therefore, prior to extensive commercialization, it is imperative to further enhance the performance and durability of PEMFC [3, 4].…”