Abstract
Flow field plays an important role in the performance of proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells, such as transporting reactants and removing water products. Therefore, the performance of a PEM fuel cell can be improved by optimizing the flow field dimensions and designs. In this work, single serpentine flow fields with four different land widths are used in PEM fuel cells to study the effects of the land width. The gas diffusion layers are made of carbon cloth. Since different land widths may be most suitable for different reactant flow rates, three different inlet flow rates are studied for all the flow fields with four different land widths. The effects of land width and inlet flow rate on fuel cell performance are studied based on the polarization curves and power densities. Without considering the pumping power, the cell performance always increases with the decrease in the land width and the increase in the inlet flow rates. However, when taking into consideration the pumping power, the net power density reaches the maximum at different combinations of land widths and reactant flow rates at different cell potentials.
Highlights
Proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells are one of the promising renewable energy devices, owing to its high energy efficiency, low operating temperature, zero emission, and low noise.there are still some barriers that inhibit the widespread application of PEM fuel cells, such as high cost, low power density, and low durability [1,2]
Wilberforce et al [3] reviewed the development of fuel cell electric cars and Zhang et al [4,5] reviewed the degradation mechanisms in PEM fuel cell, and they found that the cost reduction, performance, and durability should be improved for the commercialization of the fuel cell
The reason is that the available reactant gas to the catalyst layer increases and excess produced liquid water can be removed at a higher inlet flow rate
Summary
Proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells are one of the promising renewable energy devices, owing to its high energy efficiency, low operating temperature, zero emission, and low noise. The under-land cross-flow induced by the pressure difference between two adjacent channels in serpentine flow field helps to remove the excess produced liquid water and enhances the mass transfer, the concentration loss can still be high and can affect the fuel cell performance. Wang et al [13] found that when the channel aspect ratio (channel height/width) decreased, the performance under both medium and low operating potential increased due to the increase of the under-land cross-flow rate, but the pumping power was increased as well. Cooper et al [25] found that the land-to-channel width ratio played a more important role in performance for both parallel and interdigitated flow fields from their experimental results. The net power densities under different potentials that include the pumping power are evaluated for different flow rates and different land widths
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