Macro-scale analysis of large scale PEM fuel cell flow-fields for automotive applications

• Main Authors: S. Shimpalee, S. Hirano, M. DeBolt, V. Lilavivat, J. W. Weidner, Y. Khunatorn
• Format: Journal
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: Chemistry; Energy; Materials Science; Physics and Astronomy
• Online Access: https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?partnerID=HzOxMe3b&scp=85021694218&origin=inward; http://cmuir.cmu.ac.th/jspui/handle/6653943832/57016
• Institution: Chiang Mai University

© The Author(s) 2017. Published by ECS. All rights reserved. The objective of this work is to establish the design principles for a proton exchange membrane fuel cell in automotive applications. In this work, the macro-scale analysis was considered to create the overall design principle. A combination of experiments and numerical simulations were carried out and the results analyzed to enhance understanding of the behavior of the large-scale 300-cm2proton exchange membrane fuel cell under automotive operations. A three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics-based methodology was used to predict such as the current and temperature distributions of this design as a function of anode relative humidity. The effect of flow direction and the cooling pattern on this design was also taken into account to enhance the understanding for this selected flow-field design. The predictions show that the gas flow and cooling directions are important dependent variables that can impact the overall performance and local distributions.