Modeling the influence of coolant flow directions on thermal performance of PEM fuel cell cooling plates with serpentine and straight flow channels

Abstract

The flow direction of the coolant in cooling channels relative to the reactant gasses is critical for thermal performance. Here, four different flow patterns for the serpentine channel and three different flow patterns for the straight channel are numerically studied based on index of uniform temperature (IUT), maximum temperature, and pressure drop. For the serpentine flow channel, the left-cross pattern has the lowest index of uniform temperature and maximum temperature, while the right-cross pattern has the highest. The parallel and left-cross patterns exhibits best and worst performances, respectively, in terms of cooling performance for the straight channel. Nearly the same pressure drops are obtained for all flow patterns of both channel configurations. When the parallel pattern is used instead of the counter pattern in the straight channel and the left-cross pattern is used instead of the right-cross pattern in the serpentine channel, the IUT improves by 55.45% and 27.39%, respectively.