Optimal and modeling study of air-cooled proton exchange membrane fuel cell with various length-width ratio and numbers

Abstract

Air-cooled proton exchange membrane fuel cell is a positive and effective energy strategy to improve the efficiency of applications in robots and unmanned aerial vehicles. In this paper, novel air-cooled proton exchange membrane fuel cells based on different length-width ratio (RL/W) of the cell and the number of anode serpentine are designed to explore their effects on oxygen mass fraction distribution, temperature distribution, pressure drop, as well as the cell performance. The results show that RL/W has outstanding impact on the performance, and the uniformity of current density, oxygen mass fraction, temperature and water distribution can be improved by increasing RL/W, so as to obtain better performance. Increasing the amount of anode serpentine channels also has positive effect. While when RL/W is small, the number of anode flow channels has a greater impact on the performance and parameter distribution than the RL/W of the bipolar plate. When RL/W is greater than 2.94, the performance mainly depends on RL/W. This research provides basic data that is significant for the system optimization and application of air-cooled proton exchange membrane fuel cells in the future.