Numerical investigation of the effect of different layers configurations on the performance of radial PEM fuel cells

Abstract

This paper investigates the influence of different configurations of catalyst (CL), gas diffusion (GDL) and membrane on the performance of the radial flow field fuel cell. To this end, three different radial flow configurations were studied for the first time namely: radial with four channels (R4C), radials with two channels and horizontal MEA (R2CH) and radial with two channels and vertical MEA (R2CV) along with the conventional base fuel cell. Numerical simulations were undertaken for the equal active areas, geometric and boundary conditions including relative humidity and mass flow rates for the cathode and anode sides in all of the configurations. Examining the results of polarization curves, power density and net power demonstrated that the performance of the radial flow fuel cell can be improved significantly without obligating additional cost and only through selecting proper configuration of layers. For instance, the R4C case increases the net power of the fuel cell by 42% compared to the base model, while the R2CV case leads to a power loss by 8% compared to the base model. The results of this work can be adopted to improve the performance of various types of the PEM fuel cells through variation of the layers configuration.