Decoupling Pressure and Distribution Effects of Flow Fields on Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cell System Performance
Abstract
The performance of Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFCs) is highly dependent on the flow distribution and pressure of reactant gases, which are controlled by flow field design. The relative importance of differing supply pressure requirements of flow field designs in PEMFCs is considered here. A First-Law analysis of the auxiliary system is developed in order to demonstrate how the pressure drop affects all auxiliary system components and fuel cell unit performance. A method of comparison is then proposed to eliminate the effects of pressure in the comparison of fuel cells with different flow field designs. This method is applied to the single serpentine and parallel designs by Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation. It is shown that, of the serpentine design's 17.1% better performance, mass transport effects provide 12.2% improvement, and pressure effects account for the remaining 4.9%. Finally, a metric is proposed by which the relative effect of pressure between different flow field designs may be estimated for past results not using the recommended method, and is demonstrated by application to results found in existing literature.
Recommended Citation
J. D. Heck et al., "Decoupling Pressure and Distribution Effects of Flow Fields on Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cell System Performance," Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments, vol. 36, Elsevier Ltd, Dec 2019.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.seta.2019.100551
Department(s)
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Research Center/Lab(s)
Center for Research in Energy and Environment (CREE)
Keywords and Phrases
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD); First law analysis; Flow distributor design; Fuel cell; Polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM); System performance comparison
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
2213-1388
Document Type
Article - Journal
Document Version
Citation
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2019 Elsevier Ltd, All rights reserved.
Publication Date
01 Dec 2019
Comments
This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under the grant No. CMMI - 1131659 , USA, and by the Missouri University of Science and Technology ’s Innovation Initiative, USA.