Parametric Analysis of a Serpentine Flow Pattern Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell for Optimized Performance

Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell is considered one of the best alternatives to conventional sources of energy especially for automobile industry but faces heat and mass transfer challenges limiting its market penetration. This study investigates the effect of different parameters on the performance of a fuel cell with serpentine type single channel geometry using 3-D numerical simulations of the fuel cell model in the academic version of ANSYS Fluent 18.1. The fuel cell domain was discretized using structured hexagonal mesh with 150 K elements after a mesh independence study of the model. Numerous simulations were run for a temperature range of 298 K to 353 K, pressure between 1 to 3 bar and humidity ratio between 20%-80% to isolate the effect of transport phenomena on the performance of fuel cell. The effects of non-uniform temperature and pressure distributions due to varying mass flow rate were also studied. It was concluded that for the proposed design a mass flow rate of 0.8 mg/s at a pressure of 2.5 bar results in high current density, better water and heat removal, and reasonable pressure drop across the flow channels.