Numerical study on the effect of cathode flow channel width on PEM fuel cell performance

摘要：

　　A proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell is an electrochemical device that directly converts chemical energy of hydrogen into electric energy.The dimensions of the flow channel are critical to the PEM fuel cell performance.In this paper, the effect of the cathode flow channel width on PEM fuel cell performance was investigated numerically.A three-dimensional model was established for the PEM fuel cell which consisted of bipolar plates with three serpentine flow channels, gas diffusion layers, catalyst layers and proton exchange membrane.And then, numerical simulation for the PEM fuel cell with various cathode channel widths ranging from 0.4 mm to 1.6 mm was conducted using commercial ANSYS code.The simulated results show that there existed an optimal cathode flow charnel width in terms of the electrochemical performance as all other parameters of the PEM fuel cell were kept constant.It is found that the PEM fuel cell had the good electrochemical performance as the cathode flow channel width was from 0.8 mm to 1.0 mm in this work.

关键词： PEM fuel cell Cathode flow channel width Electrochemical performance Numerical simulation

作者: Xiang Shen Jinzhu Tan Xuemei Han Jing Zhou

作者单位: School of Mechanical and Power Engineering.Nanjing Tech University,Nanjing,Jiangsu 211816,China

会议类型: 国际会议

会议名称: 2015 International Symposium on Structural Integrity(2015年国际结构完整性学术会议)

会议地点: 沈阳

会议语种:英文

页码: 101-106

在线出版日期: 2015-05-16（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）