Investigation on the Improvement of PEM Fuel Cell Performance through Two Novel Flow Field Designs

Abstract

To further improve the cell performance of a proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC), thus meeting the high requirement for its automotive and stationary application, great efforts have been made on the optimization of the flow field pattern[1,2]. In this work, two novel flow field patterns are proposed and the influences on the cell performance are investigated. Both two novel flow field designs lead to superior cell performance than the conventional flow field patterns do, and this can be attributed to their superiority in removing water at high current densities while increasing the flow velocity near the outlet. The velocity magnitude in flow fields is examined and compared through the computational fluid dynamics modeling. Acknowledgements This work was supported in part by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 21373135 and 21533005) and Science Foundation of Ministry of Education of China ( Grant No. 413064).