No abstract

The performance of a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) closely depends on internal reactant diffusion and liquid water removal. As one of the key components of PEMFCs, bipolar plates (BPs) provide paths for reactant diffusion and product transport. Therefore, to achieve high fuel cell performance, one key issue is designing BPs with a reasonable flow field. This paper provides a comprehensive review of various modifications of the conventional parallel flow field, interdigitated flow field, and serpentine flow field to improve fuel cells’ overall performance. The main focuses for modifications of conventional flow fields are flow field shape, length, aspect ratio, baffle, trap, auxiliary inlet, and channels, as well as channel numbers. These modifications can partly enhance reactant diffusion and product transport while maintaining an acceptable flow pressure drop. This review also covers the detailed structural description of the newly developed flow fields, including the 3D flow field, metal flow field, and bionic flow field. Moreover, the effects of these flow field designs on the internal physical quantity transport and distribution, as well as the fuel cells’ overall performance, are investigated. This review describes state-of-the-art flow field design, identifies the key research gaps, and provides references and guidance for the design of high-performance flow fields for PEMFCs in the future.

Proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is a new energy device with wide application prospects. The design of its flow field is one of the effective methods to improve its performance. As key parameters of the PEMFC, mass transport is directly dependent on these channels in flow fields. To enhance the mass transport in the channel, some simple two‐step structures with forced convection are proposed in previous research. But the convections formed by these simple structures are only in one direction. Compared to the complex flow behaviors of the gas in PEMFC, these one‐direction convections are not enough. Then the more comprehensive dimensional convections are made by a new kind of two‐step structure with lateral narrowing. The mathematical model of the new‐designed PEMFC is simulated by the Fluent module in the computational fluid dynamics software ANSYS. Compared with the parallel‐straight‐flow channel, the current density of the new channel proposed in this paper can be increased by 12.5%.