Abstract
In order to produce low-cost flow field plates for polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells, we used nickel foam in this study rather than conventional flow field. Nickel foam has high electron conductivity, thermal conductivity, and mechanical strength. Electrochemical impedance spectrum analysis is carried out to evidence the use on flow field plates of nickel foam. From the impedance fitting results, the nickel foam cases showed the lower contact resistance than the serpentine. However, such plates have poor performance at low temperatures and ambient pressure. In order to overcome this, a multi-segment foam flow field is designed in this study. This increased the performance of the polarization curve by 70% from 162 to 275.5 mw cm-2 than the original nickel foam design. Also, the mass transfer resistance was reduced, and the Warburg impedance value of the operation voltage decreased by 0.4 V. The numerical analysis results demonstrate that increased segment numbers can increase the performance of the multi-segment foam flow field.
Highlights
Because global warming continues to be a serious problem, new clean power sources, such as polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs), has become a major subject of study
The ratio of the channel area to the rib area is an important parameter correlating to the flow field layout
The equivalent permeability of the serpentine flow field is 2.76110-11 m, slightly lower than that of the nickel foam used in this study, but still of the same order of magnitude
Summary
Because global warming continues to be a serious problem, new clean power sources, such as polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs), has become a major subject of study. According to Kumar and Reddy’s research, they have used porous media, such as graphite cloth and metal foam, to replace conventional flow field materials [2,3,4] Their simulation results show that metal foam flow fields have more uniform current distribution than conventional ones [2]. In their studies, the operation condition was usually ~80°C and 207 kPa high back pressures. The metal foam flow field had better performance than the conventional flow field In their studies, they showed that when the operation temperatures was adjusted from 80°C to 40°C, 207 kPa back pressure and 0.6 V operation voltage, the current density decreased by 47% (from 580 to 310 mA cm-2) [3]. Concerning PEMFC durability the nickel foam should be replaced by durable metal foam or carbon foam [5]
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