Numerical investigation of the effect of blocked gas flow field on PEM fuel cell performance

Proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) systems are up and coming power source for transportation and stationary applications and sustainable energy conversion sources in the near future if optimal cell performance is provided. PEMFCs operating parameters, new design, or a new arrangement are critical issues affecting cell performance. They have to be considered carefully. In this paper, a three-dimensional, one-phase computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of PEM fuel cell with blocked gas flow field has been developed by using CFD tool to observe the effects of blockage on the cell performance. It is mainly to reach the maximum cell performance, and an appropriate gas flow field should be supplied to the PEMFC. Hence, it is supplied a novel gas flow field along with two different patterns (rectangular and semi-cylindrical form) to the PEMFC. Polarization curves are generated for each new pattern to investigate the blockage effect on the cell performance compared to the traditional gas flow field. Consequently, rectangular and semi-cylindrical patterns increase the gas flow velocity in the channel and hence improve the effective mass transport from the channel center to the catalyst layer in the proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell. It is recorded that, compared to a straight PEMFC, the rectangular gas flow field and semi-cylindrical gas flow field improve approximately 49.3%, 49.9% of current density, respectively.