A novel radial air-breathing proton exchange membrane fuel cell for miniaturized applications with effective stacking potentials

Abstract

Increasing volumetric power density in fuel cells can be accomplished by increasing its compactness or output power. This is very crucial for miniaturized applications due to constraints in available spaces. In this study, a three-dimensional, multiphase, and non-isothermal computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tool is used to develop a novel radial air-breathing (AB) PEM fuel cell for miniaturized applications, which has unique stack-ability feature. The noted cell can accommodate multiply higher active area in cathode electrode with respect to planar and tubular AB designs. Increasing the cathode side active area, the electrode with the highest sources of losses for the kinetics of reactions in proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells, has shown to play a significant role in performance enhancement of radial AB cells. For instance, at 0.4 Acm−2 the radial AB PEM fuel cell, can deliver 27.9 % and 10 % more power than the earlier planar and tubular AB ones, respectively. The stack-ability of AB fuel cells usually face severe challenges due to non-uniform air supply to the cells, resulting in imbalance of the cells output power. As opposed to tubular and planar AB cells, one unique feature for the present radial AB stack design is its attack-ability that ensures adequate and uniform supply of air/oxygen to all cells.