Experimental Analysis on Flow Field Pattern of PEM Fuel Cells

The polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells flow fields channels serve the same roles as nutrient and reactant circulation systems in plants and animals, so bio-inspired flow field channels with a similar could improve reactant uniform transport efficiency and boost fuel cell performance. In this analysis, the lung channel configuration of a humane lung and a tree leaf bio-inspired flow field channels are used as an anode and cathode bipolar plate. A channel model is developed for three new flow field patterns designs: leaf design, lung design and triple-serpentine. It has been observed that the performance improvement in terms of power in the bio-inspired flow field is 13.32% more than the triple serpentine. This indicates the bio-inspired design has good performance than other flow field design. Further a parametric steady is carried out experimentally to study the effect of cell operating temperature, anode and cathode humidity, hydrogen and oxygen flow rate on the cell performance.