Calculations of transport phenomena and reaction distribution in a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell

Abstract

This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the author for internal non-commercial research and education use, including for instruction at the authors institution and sharing with colleagues.Other uses, including reproduction and distribution, or selling or licensing copies, or posting to personal, institutional or third party websites are prohibited. The performance of Polymer Electrolyte Membrane fuel cells depends on the design of the cell as well as the operating conditions. The design of the cell influences the complex interaction of activation effects, ohmic losses, and transport limitations, which in turn determines the local current density. Detailed models of the electrochemical reactions and transport phenomena in Polymer Electrolyte Membrane fuel cells can be used to determine the current density distribution for a given fuel cell design and operating conditions. In this work, three-dimensional, multicomponent and multiphase transport calculations are performed using a computational fluid dynamics code. The computational results for a full-scale fuel cell design show that ohmic effects due to drying of polymer electrolyte in the anode catalyst layer and membrane, and transport limitations of air and flooding in the cathode cause the current density to be a maximum near the gas channel inlets where ohmic losses and transport limitations are a minimum. Elsewhere in the cell, increased ohmic losses and transport limitations cause a decrease in current density, and the performance of the fuel cell is significantly lower than that which could be attained if the ohmic losses and transport limitations throughout the cell were the same as those near the gas channel inlets. Thus overall fuel cell design is critical in maximizing unit performance. Crown

A Simple, Effective Viscosity Formulation for Turbulent Flow and Heat Transfer in Compact Heat Exchangers

“…(11) with smoothed experimental data for an offset-fin strip-fin heat exchanger, namely surface no. 1/9-24.12, core 105 (from Shah and London 1967;Kays and London 1984). It can be seen that Eq.…”

Three-dimensional multiphase flow computational fluid dynamics models for proton exchange membrane fuel cell: A theoretical development

“…System boundary Computational domain CFD software Shimpalee and Dutta 10 Single flow channel with GDL and MEA Single domain Fluent Berning and Djilali 11 Single flow channel with GDL and MEA Multi-domain CFX Mazumder and Cole 12 Single flow channel with GDL and MEA Single domain CFD-ACEþ Coppo et al 13 Single flow channel with GDL and MEA Single domain CFDesign Matamoros and Bruggemann 14 Single flow channel with GDL and MEA Single domain Own written codes Al-Baghdadi and Al-Janabi 15 Single flow channel with GDL and MEA Multi-domain Unspecified Schwarz and Djilali 16 Single flow channel with GDL and MEA Single domain Fluent Shimpalee et al 17 Complete cell Single domain STAR-CD Jang et al 18 Complete cell Single domain Unspecified Ren et al 19 Double flow channels with GDL and MEA Single domain Unspecified Wang 20 Single flow channel with GDL and MEA Single domain Own written codes Wang et al 21 Single flow channel Single domain Fluent Berning et al 22 Single flow channel with GDL and CL Multi-domain unspecified Schwarz and Beale 23 Complete cell Single domain Fluent Schwarz and Djilali 24 Single flow channel with GDL and MEA Single domain Fluent Berning et al 25 Single flow channel with GDL and MEA Multi-domain CFX Yuan et al 26 Single flow channel with GDL and MEA Single domain Fluent Wu et al 27 Single flow channel with GDL and MEA Single domain Fluent Cordiner et al 28 Single flow channel with GDL and MEA Multi-domain Fluent Fink and Fouquet 29 Complete cell Multi-domain AVL FIRE Kang et al 30 Complete cell Single domain Fluent Chiu et al 31 Single flow channel with GDL and MEA Single domain CFD-ACEþ Sun et al 32 Single flow channel with GDL and MEA Multi-domain Own written codes Cao et al 33 Single flow channel with GDL and MEA Single domain Own written codes Hossain et al 34 Single flow channel with GDL and MEA Single domain Fluent Jiang and Wang 35 Single flow channel with GDL and MEA Single domain Fluent Mancusi et al 36 Single flow channel with GDL and MEA Single domain Fluent Choopanya and Yang 37 Complete cell Singl...…”

“…Schwarz and Beale 23 implemented a comprehensive model to perform multiphase transport calculations and to investigate the effects of ohmic losses and transport limitations on current density distributions for the cell design. It was found that the current density in the cathode CL is concentrated near the gas channels inlets due to the resistances of air and flooding to oxygen transport.…”

Open-source Computational Model for Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cells

“…The majority of fuel cell models have been implemented in commercial packages, such as PHOENICS [30], STAR-CD [31][32][33], Ansys Fluent [12,13,20,[34][35][36] or COMSOL [37,38]. The precise numerical implementation is seldom disclosed, moreover the possibility to reuse and extend such models is very limited [25].…”