A Computational Fluid Dynamics Study in a PEM Fuel Cell with Different Flow Fields

In this paper, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) study in a proton exchange membrane fuel cell model with different flow field designs is presented. The study was carried out to investigate the effects caused by serpentine, parallel, interdigitated and spiral channel configurations on the performance of fuel cells. An active area of 24 cm2 for all flow fields was considered. From a commercial CFD code that solves governing equations and an electrochemical model, local distributions of pressure, temperature, species, proton conductivity and current density contours were obtained. The numerical results were analyzed in detail and showed the contribution of each transport phenomenon to the electrochemical reactions that take place inside of the fuel cell. The simulations were carried out with operating conditions of a pressure of 3 atm, a temperature of 353 K and a relative humidity of 100%. The numerical results demonstrated that the spiral flow field is better than the other tested designs because it homogeneously distributes the species over the entire active area of the cell, which allows a better distribution of temperature and proton conductivity in the membrane and catalyst layer, respectively, favoring mass and energy transport through the fuel cell.