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Polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell flow field design criteria – Application to parallel serpentine flow patterns

•A design procedure is developed for parallel serpentine flow field of fuel cells.•Operational, manufacturing and assembly constraints introduce six analytical filters.•Enforcing the constraints filters all the initial geometrical cases.•simulations were performed for all the filtered cases with ran...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Energy conversion and management 2018-06, Vol.166, p.281-296
Main Authors: Ghanbarian, A., Kermani, M.J., Scholta, J., Abdollahzadeh, M.
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:•A design procedure is developed for parallel serpentine flow field of fuel cells.•Operational, manufacturing and assembly constraints introduce six analytical filters.•Enforcing the constraints filters all the initial geometrical cases.•simulations were performed for all the filtered cases with rank 1 for the best.•The method is applied for a given active area, but generalizable for any other area. One key strategy for maximizing the performance of fuel cells is the choice of proper flow field pattern. In this paper, a procedure was developed for the proper design of parallel serpentine flow field for proton exchange membrane fuel cells. Several parameters including the channel width and height, the rib between two adjacent channels, and the numbers of parallel channels and serpentine turns were considered and all the possible flow field configurations within the range of these design parameters were defined. In the next step, six consecutive constraining filters were defined and enforced to all the possible flow field configurations. In the final step, a complete three dimensional simulations were conducted for the remaining cases. Based on the results of the simulations, these cases were ranked, with the best case corresponds to the flow field with the minimum pressure drop, the maximum oxygen content at the surface of catalyst layer, maximum uniformity of oxygen distribution within the catalyst layer and minimum content of the condensate produced within the catalyst layer.
ISSN:0196-8904
1879-2227
DOI:10.1016/j.enconman.2018.04.018