Design and numerical investigation of multi-channel cooling plate for proton exchange membrane fuel cell

Abstract

Proton exchange membrane fuel cells need cooling plates with strong heat exchange capacity to maintain temperature balance. In order to obtain better cooling performance, four new types of flow field distribution of cooling plate are designed, including local serpentine channel, local parallel channel and the flow field in which the four channels are symmetrically distributed along the diagonal and horizontal centerline of the cooling plate. The maximum temperature, temperature difference, temperature uniformity index and pressure drop of the multi-channel cooling plate under different working conditions are analyzed by numerical simulation. The results show that the multi-channel design can effectively enhance the heat transfer effect of the cooling plate and reduce the pressure drop. The local serpentine channel design can increase the fluidity of the coolant, avoid local reflux, make the temperature distribution more uniform and avoid local overheating. The maximum temperature of local serpentine channel flow field is 1.2 K lower than that of local parallel channel flow field. The pressure drop of internal parallel flow field design is 2.58 kPa, which is 62% lower than that the design of internal serpentine flow field. Increasing the inlet coolant flow can strengthen the heat transfer capacity of the cooling plate, when the flow rate increases from 2e-6 m3/s to 4e-6 m3/s, the maximum decrease is 8.53% of Model6. But it will increase the pressure drop of the channel with long cooling channel, the maximum pressure drop increase is 924 kPa when the inlet flow increases from 6e-6 m3/s to 8e-6 m3/s.