Numerical Study on Effect of Flow Field Configuration on Air-Breathing Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Stacks

Zhi Liu, Tingting Sun and Fuqiang Bai ()
Additional contact information
Zhi Liu: State Key Laboratory of Engines, Tianjin University, 135 Yaguan Road, Tianjin 300350, China
Tingting Sun: State Key Laboratory of Engines, Tianjin University, 135 Yaguan Road, Tianjin 300350, China
Fuqiang Bai: State Key Laboratory of Engines, Tianjin University, 135 Yaguan Road, Tianjin 300350, China

Energies, 2024, vol. 17, issue 11, 1-13

Abstract: Air-breathing proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) show enormous potential in small and portable applications because of their brief construction time without the need for gas supply, humidification and cooling devices. In the current work, a 3D multiphase model of single air-breathing PEMFCs is developed by considering the contact resistance between the gas diffusion layer and bipolar plate and the anisotropic thermal conduction and electric conductive in the through-plane and in-plane directions. The 3D model presents good grid independence and agreement with the experimental polarization curve. The single PEMFC with the best open area ratio of 55% achieves the maximum peak power density of 179.3 mW cm −2 . For the fuel cell stack with 10 single fuel cells, the application of the anode window flow field is beneficial to improve the stack peak power density compared to the anode serpentine flow field. The developed model is capable of providing assistance in designing high-performance air-breathing PEMFC stacks.

Keywords: air-breathing PEMFC; flow field configuration; 3D multiphase model; open area ratio; fuel cell stack (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/17/11/2501/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/17/11/2501/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:17:y:2024:i:11:p:2501-:d:1400019

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().