2011, Volume 14, Issue 2
Study of Flow Field Design for Improving PEMFC Performance
1 National Institute for Research and Development for Cryogenics and Isotopic Technologies - ICIT Rm. Valcea, Uzinei Street no. 4, P.O. Box Raureni 7, 240050, Ramnicu Valcea, Romania
2 Romanian Academy of Sciences, Mathematical Institute, Bucharest, Romania
*Corresponding author: Elena Carcadea, E-mail: lili@icsi.ro
Published: October 2011Abstract
A comprehensive multi-physics model has been developed to simulate proton exchange membrane fuel cells using commercially available COMSOL MULTIPHYSICS software. The developed model accounts simultaneously for electrochemical kinetics and multi-component species transport. The proposed model is a full cell model, which includes all the parts of the PEM fuel cell, flow channels, gas diffusion electrodes, catalyst layers and the membrane. Coupled transport and electrochemical kinetics equations are solved in a single domain.
The three-dimensional fuel cell model was developed to predict the effects of operating parameters (e.g. potential difference applied, operating pressure, fuel cell temperature, relative humidity of reactant gases) on the performance of three different flow field designs for PEM fuel cells: mixed channel (serpentine + parallel), serpentine and serpentine with rounded corners.
Keywords
Geometry, fuel cell, modeling.
Tag search Geometry fuel cell modeling
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ISSN 1582-2575
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