Experimental investigation of the effect of channel length on performance and water accumulation in a PEMFC parallel flow field

Bachman, John Christopher; Charvet, Maxime; Santamaria, Anthony D.; Tang, Hong-Yue; Park, Jae Wan; Walker, Robert V.

doi:10.1016/j.ijhydene.2012.08.023

Cited by 78 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Importantly, there is evidence for water accumulation in the literature [1,9,18], and this new flow regime map captures this behavior. Even accounting for evaporation in their calculation, Hussaini and Wang [1] note that with a dry gas (RH = 26%) and higher current densities (800 mA cm -2 ), liquid water could still accumulate at lower gas flows.…”

Section: Discussion Of the New Lm Approachmentioning

confidence: 61%

“…Directly important to fuel cell operation, Bachman et al [9] used neutron imaging to quantify accumulation in an active fuel cell at 500 mA cm -2 , and showed higher accumulation led to lower voltage performance. Under the same operating conditions but changing the channel length of ten parallel channels, they were able to increase the superficial velocities due to an increase in the active area.…”

Section: Discussion Of the New Lm Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Water accumulation in the flow channel can not only decrease the voltage but can also lead to a less stable voltage signal [9,10]. Liquid water in the channels also increases the pressure drop in the flow field channel [11][12][13], which is a parasitic power loss of the system with increased energy consumed when supplying the reactants [14].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Development of two-phase flow regime specific pressure drop models for proton exchange membrane fuel cells

Anderson

Eggleton

Zhang

2015

International Journal of Hydrogen Energy

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Water is an inevitable byproduct in proton exchange membrane fuel cells that can lead to complex two-phase flow throughout the cell's components, including the flow field channels utilized for gas delivery. A modified Lockhart-Martinelli (LM) approach based on unique water introduction through the gas diffusion layer is used here to predict the gas-liquid pressure drop in these channels by modifying the Chisholm parameter C. This paper exclusively uses experimental data of two-phase flow multipliers from four sources in the literature, all of which are obtained from active fuel cell operation. C does not appear to change strongly as a function of temperature, relative humidity, or air stoichiometry, but does vary significantly with the current density. This is especially true at low current densities (< 500 mA cm-2). To capture this behavior, C is defined as a flow regime dependent parameter based on a flow regime map from the active fuel cell data. In addition to the traditionally used slug, film, and single-phase regimes, an 'accumulating' flow regime is proposed to capture the behavior of C and two-phase flow multipliers at low current densities. The proposed accumulating flow regime is consistent with visual observation reported in the literature. In addition, the developed LM approach can be employed to optimize fuel cell flow field design and operation.

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Section: Discussion Of the New Lm Approachmentioning

confidence: 61%

Section: Discussion Of the New Lm Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Development of two-phase flow regime specific pressure drop models for proton exchange membrane fuel cells

Anderson

Eggleton

Zhang

2015

International Journal of Hydrogen Energy

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“…The serpentine flow field enjoys great popularity due to its excellence in water removal. However, this flow field has two main drawbacks: The reactant mass is unevenly distributed along the long channel [6]; Under the high pressure drop, the transport of the reactive gas requires a high pumping power, resulting in a huge parasitic pumping loss [7]. Much research has been done to overcome these defects.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Radial Flow Field of Circular Bipolar Plate for Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells

Zhu¹,

Zheng²

2019

IJHT

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The channel structure of flow field is an important influencing factor of the operation and performance of proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). Based on circular bipolar plate, three radial flow fields, namely, Radial-I, Radial-II and Radial-III, with different structures were created, and compared to disclose the effects of radial channel on the flow field for the PEMFC. The results show that radial flow fields clearly outperformed traditional flow fields like parallel, single serpentine and multiple serpentine flow fields. Radial-II has the highest current density and power density than any other flow field. The channel and rib widths of radial flow field have greater impacts on PEMFC performance than channel depth. Radial flow field can effectively improve the water discharge and reduce the pressure drop of the PEMFC. The research findings shed new light on the performance improvement of the PEMFC.

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“…They concluded that while the serpentine channel has better performance than the uniform and the zigzag pin type flow channel without cubic porous, zigzag pin type flow channel with 80e90% porosity has better performance than the others. Bachman et al [11] carried out experimental study to examine the channel length effect over the PEMFC performance by using parallel flow plate. Their results indicated that longer channels than 25 cm were more effective than shorter 5 cm channels.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Performance prediction of PEM fuel cell with wavy serpentine flow channel by using artificial neural network

Seyhan

Akansu

Murat

et al. 2017

International Journal of Hydrogen Energy

103

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Experimental investigation of the effect of channel length on performance and water accumulation in a PEMFC parallel flow field

Cited by 78 publications

References 26 publications

Development of two-phase flow regime specific pressure drop models for proton exchange membrane fuel cells

Development of two-phase flow regime specific pressure drop models for proton exchange membrane fuel cells

Radial Flow Field of Circular Bipolar Plate for Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells

Performance prediction of PEM fuel cell with wavy serpentine flow channel by using artificial neural network

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