Numerical investigation of obstacle's effect on the performance of proton-exchange membrane fuel cell: studying the shape of obstacles

Abstract

Fuel cells are the technology through which chemical energy can be converted to electricity and heat. They perform the conversion with no contamination. Hence, they have become a significant source of clean power in today's modern life. That being said, it is really crucial that every source of power provides a high and stable amount of efficiency, and it should be considered when it comes to developing PEM fuel cell technology as well. One of the most important parameters in applying such fuel cells is the layout and dimensions of the flow field designed for the reactors on the bipolar plates of the fuel cell and its improvement. In the current research, for the best geometry dimension and arrangement of obstacles, four types of obstacle including triangular, cylindrical, square and trapezoidal are simulated. The obtained results show that the triangular obstacle has the best performance in terms of the produced current density and pressure drop. The results reveal that at the constant voltage of 0.6 V, the current density in the flow field with triangular and square obstacles is increased more than 80% in comparison to cylindrical and trapezoidal types. Finally, the fuel cell with triangular and square obstacles as the optimum flow field is designed, manufactured and tested.