Investigation of Spiral Flow‐Field Design on the Performance of a PEM Fuel Cell

Abstract

Polymer exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) are promising energy converters due to their unique features with an application potential for many sectors. The performance of PEM fuel cells depends on a number of factors, one of which is suitable flow‐field design. In this study, the effect of spiral flow‐field design is investigated with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method. The model consists of the transport phenomena in a fuel cell. Electrochemical reactions, mass, heat, energy, species transport, and potential fields equations are solved by ANSYS‐FLUENT. The polarization and power density curve, temperature, pressure, and distributions of the gases inside the flow‐fields were obtained. The results were compared with the reference geometry. Although the spiral flow‐field has considerable ohmic losses, the velocity and pressure distributions of the gases are found to be uniform. Furthermore, it is shown that the spiral flow‐field reduces the pressure drop per unit length of the flow‐field. When compared to other flow‐field designs, the spiral flow‐field is found to be quite efficient by means of auxiliary power consumption.

The energy performance improvement of a PEM fuel cell with various chaotic flowing channels

“…Various research works have focused on the design of the flow channels. Common designs of PEMFC flow channels include parallel flow channel, serpentine flow channel, spiral flow channel, grid flow channel, intersectant flow channel, and fractal flow channel. Also some other designs of flow channels have been proposed such as install baffle plates into flow channel or add blocks into flow channels .…”

A generalized reduced fluid dynamic model for flow fields and electrodes in redox flow batteries

“…Either Equation () or Equation () are obtained through a simplified straight, two‐channel IDFF (Figure S17 of the Supporting Information), where the rib width is unique and well‐defined. However, this may not always be the case, as evinced by the geometry reported in Ibrahimoglu et al 55 Hence, we present an approximated approach to estimate the equivalent rib width across arbitrary geometries.…”

“…In this section, we verify the reduced 2D model by considering a diverse range of flow field geometries. Apart from the aforementioned three classical straight‐channel flow fields with well‐defined rib widths (i.e., IDFF, PFF, and SFF), 27,57 four different geometries artificially designed by the authors and three geometries described in previous literature 47,55,58 are simulated and carefully examined by comparing the fluid dynamic responses of the 2D and 3D models. All geometries have the same dimensions as the stated classical ones, whose geometric parameters can be found in the supporting information of Milshtein et al 57 Additionally, to examine the effectiveness of the approximated λ opt , the corresponding results obtained from Equation () are also included.…”

“…Comparison of fluid dynamic responses between the 2D and 3D models with IDFF 27 (A), SFF 57 (B), and flow field geometries from 58 (C) and 55 (D) in velocity (1) and pressure (2) at Q ref (10 ml min −1 ), and pressure drop versus various flow rates from 1 to 15 ml min −1 (3). λ 1 and λ 2 refer to values estimated through Equations () and (), respectively…”

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

“…In recent years, some new flow fields have emerged, such as intersecting flow field [11], spiral flow field [12], tree-like flow field [13] and radial flow field [14,15]. In addition, Toyota Mirai [16,17] developed a 3D complex flow field good at water management and oxygen delivery, but the channel structure is complex, costly and difficult to process.…”