Experimental Investigation of Effect of Flow Bed Design on Performance of Liquid Feed Direct Methanol Fuel Cells

Abstract

The effect of flow bed design on the performance of a liquid feed direct methanol fuel cell was studied experimentally. The flow beds were designed and manufactured with different channel densities, channel depths, and ridge widths. The flow beds were machined on stainless steel polar plates. The experimental results showed that ridge width affects the slope of the ohmic polarization curve. A ridge width of 3.30 mm provided the highest peak power. When the contact surface area between the flow bed and electrode was constant, the effect of channel density on cell performance was minimal, under the experimental conditions of this paper. The channel depth had a considerable influence on cell performance with a 2 mm deep channel achieving the best performance. The mechanism of the experimental phenomena was analyzed in this paper.

Baffle shape effects on mass transfer and power loss of proton exchange membrane fuel cells with different baffled flow channels

“…They found that the flow field design significantly affected the heat and mass distribution and the output performance. [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] In previous researches, studies on flow field designs just focused on the two-dimensional space. What was changed was just on the two-dimensional (2D) plane on the flow field plate, and nothing was changed in the direction which was vertical to the surface of gas diffusion layers (GDLs).…”

“…where λ is the water content in the proton exchange membranes (Equation 10) and D 0 w−M is the initial water diffusion coefficient in the proton exchange membranes, which is expressed as Equation 11:…”

“…In the past decades, numbers of researchers studied the mass transfer and performance of PEMFCs with different flow fields, such as the parallel flow field, serpentine flow field, and interdigited flow field. They found that the flow field design significantly affected the heat and mass distribution and the output performance …”

An experimental study of mutual effects among two‐phase flow, heat transfer, and performance in proton exchange membrane fuel cells with orientated‐type flow channels

“…Our previous experimental study had reported the side-view observation method in details. 32 In previous studies, numerous of previous publications had utilized the transparent plates to observe the gas-liquid two-phase flow inside PEMFCs, for example, the references, 2,3,24,25 etc. In addition, CHOI H et al 33 also utilized the transparent plates at PEMFCs to observe the water flooding phenomenon inside the cell.…”

A numerical study on convection and diffusion of mass transfer in proton exchange membrane fuel cells with orientated‐type flow channels

“…In a PEMFC, whatever in a normal gravity condition or low gravity condition, the pressure drop and liquid water distribution are key issues that affect the electrochemical reactions in CLs 6 . The flow field design significantly impacts the reactants and products transportation in flow channels and gas diffusion layers (GDLs) 7 . The conventional flow field structure designs were just on the flow channels arrangement, and the cross‐section areas of them were rectangular, such as the serpentine flow field, cascade flow field, paralleled flow field, and interdigitated flow field.…”