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Computational Fluid Dynamics Study of Serpentine Flow Field Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell Performance

Abstract Fuel cell is an electro-chemical device that directly converts the chemical energy of fuel into usable electrical form without any toxic byproducts. Flow field plates are backbone of the fuel cell. It is the essential component of fuel cell with multifunctional character. In the present work, a complete three-dimensional steady-state isothermal single phase computational fluid dynamics model is proposed for a proton exchange membrane fuel cell with serpentine flow channel to analyze the species transport phenomenon. The numerical model was developed and analyzed using ANSYS FLUENT 15.0 and simulations were carried out to get the key parameters like variation of oxygen, hydrogen, liquid water activity, and water mass fraction in the flow channels, membrane water content, and membrane protonic conductivity. The numerical results show that, when the cell is operated at higher current densities, i.e. lower cell voltage, hydrogen and oxygen consumption is more as well as water generation is also more. The effect of cell operating temperature and reactants inlet humidity on cell performance was also studied. Finally, the polarization curve obtained was compared with the experimental results and it was found that the numerical results are having good agreement with the experimental results.