The effect of increasing the multiplicity of flow fields contact surface on the performance of PEM fuel cell

Abstract

In this paper, three innovative 3-D geometries for flow fields of cathode and anode have been developed to investigate the comparative impact of increasing the multiplicity of the involved anode-cathode channel surface contact on the efficiency of electrochemical reaction via the same membrane electrode assembly (MEA) active area. In the introduced new models, each anode channel includes two, three and four cathodes while the convectional model include a one to one connection. The governing equations consist of mass, momentum and energy conservation. In addition, the species transport and the electric/ionic fields were solved numerically using the finite volume method under the assumptions of steady state and non-isothermal fluid flow. Simulation results revealed that increasing the multiplicity of the anode-cathode involved surface of reactants channel leads to current and power density enhancement due to the improved opportunity of reactants penetration and less concentration losses. Also, a considerable reduction of mono-cell volume size and costs for the new models in comparison with the base design was achieved.