Performance Enhancement of PEM Fuel Cells with an Additional Outlet in the Parallel Flow Field

Abstract

The design of bipolar plates is critical for improving the performance of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs). In this research, a new additional outlet based on a PEMFC’s parallel flow field was proposed, and three different positions of outlet were designed on the target side of gas flowing in parallel channels. The results revealed that the additional outlets are able to increase the gas speed through channels near the additional outlets, which results in a lower water saturation and a more uniform distribution of oxygen concentration at the interface between the catalyst layer (CL) and gas diffusion layer (GDL). With the variation of the outlet position in the target side, it was found that the additional outlet set in the middle of the target side exhibits the highest increase of peak power density, namely, 13%. Furthermore, the optimal position of the additional outlet was proved to be suitable for PEMFCs with various active surface areas, indicating the universality of the present results in the study.

Flow Channel Architecture and Diffusion Characteristics of Nonenzymatic Electrochemical Glucose Fuel Cells with Proton Exchange Membrane

“…It exhibits the worst performance among the anode flow‐field plates applied in this study. The increases in power and current densities are also lower than those of the other flow‐field plate designs, because the glucose solution does not reach the entire flow path, owing to the characteristics of the parallel flow path, and it is difficult to disperse because of the low differential pressure [11,51,52] . Consequently, even if the channel width is increased, the performance is low because the glucose permeability is not sufficiently improved.…”

Computational Analysis of Pem Fuel Cell Under Different Operating Conditions

“…The total number of elements is 893000 with a minimum orthogonality of 0.6169546. According to the paper (Zhang et al, 2021), where the dependence of the results on the mesh density was examined for a full fuel cell, not only for one channel, it is indicated that the number of 707556 mesh elements is sufficient. In this work, 893000 elements were obtained for only one channel.…”

Fractional Order PID Design for a Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell System Using an Extended Grey Wolf Optimizer

“…In addition, its function as an energy carrier, its storability can be exploited to meet the requirements set by energy consumers [4]. The fuel cells emerge as the missing link by transforming chemical energy into electrical energy with high efficiency [5]. Hence, they use the chemical energy of hydrogen and oxygen to generate electricity without pollution, and the other products are just plain water, and heat [6].…”