Title: Development of flow field plates based on asymmetric leaf structure for PEM fuel cells

Authors: Tao Chen; ShiHua Liu; Li Yang

Addresses: School of Mechanical and Electronic Engineering, Hubei Provincial Key Laboratory of Fuel Cell, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, China ' School of Mechanical and Electronic Engineering, Hubei Provincial Key Laboratory of Fuel Cell, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, China ' School of Mechanical and Electronic Engineering, Hubei Provincial Key Laboratory of Fuel Cell, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, China

Abstract: Bipolar plates are the key parts of a polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell, which allow the reaction gas to be more evenly distributed over the electrode surface, so that the fuel cell can achieve the best performance. In this paper, a novel asymmetric flow channel is used to design the bipolar plate of PEM fuel cells. It is demonstrated by numerical simulation that the structure of the asymmetrical bionic flow field plate, shows pressure loss from the inlet to outlet less than the pressure loss of the conventional flow field. In the design of asymmetrical bionic flow channel structure, it can scatter gas into each bifurcation channel uniformly, improving the efficiency of gas reaction and pushing the water generated during the reaction from each branch to the outlet, which may be conducive to prevent water flooding of the fuel cell.

Keywords: polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells; asymmetrical structure; leaf; flow field; numerical simulation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMSI.2017.089657

International Journal of Materials and Structural Integrity, 2017 Vol.11 No.4, pp.229 - 243

Received: 23 Sep 2017
Accepted: 23 Sep 2017
Published online: 05 Feb 2018 *

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