Elucidating the operating behavior of PEM fuel cell with nickel foam as cathode flow field

Metal foam material, which serves as an alternative replacement of the conventional flow distributor of proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell, has been attracting much attention over last few decades. In this work, three-dimensional modeling work for PEM fuel cell containing metal foam as cathode...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science China. Technological sciences 2021-05, Vol.64 (5), p.1041-1056
Main Authors: Huo, Sen, Shi, WeiYu, Wang, RenFang, Lu, BingBing, Wang, Yang, Jiao, Kui, Hou, ZhongJun
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cathodes
Diffusion layers
Distributors
Electron transport
Engineering
Fuel cells
Gas flow
Gaseous diffusion
Humidification
Metal foams
Oxygen transfer
Parallel flow
Porous materials
Proton exchange membrane fuel cells
Three dimensional models
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Summary:Metal foam material, which serves as an alternative replacement of the conventional flow distributor of proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell, has been attracting much attention over last few decades. In this work, three-dimensional modeling work for PEM fuel cell containing metal foam as cathode flow distributor has been carried out. The fuel cell performance and operating characteristics of metal foam flow field and conventional parallel flow channel have been compared and discussed. The cell performance has been reasonably validated based on the corresponding experimental tests conducted in this study. The superior performance of PEM fuel cell with metal foam as cathode flow field benefits a lot from the uniform gas flow. The porous metal foam material provides more pathways for the water delivery at the interface of metal foam flow field and gas diffusion layer (GDL), accelerating water removal capability of cathode. Because of the significant oxygen transfer loss in diffusion limited parallel channel, the operation of PEM fuel cell with parallel channel is found to be more sensitive to cathode humidification and oxygen supply at inlet. Due to the more uniform and effective electron transport though the porous electrode, it is possible to use thinner GDL in metal foam PEM fuel cell. It is expected that this study could give a good baseline of operating behavior of PEM fuel cell with metal foam flow distributor.
ISSN:1674-7321
1869-1900
DOI:10.1007/s11431-020-1767-5