The use of phase-change cooling strategy in proton exchange membrane fuel cells: A numerical study

Thermal management is considered a critical issue in proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs), since it not only influences the cell performance but also impacts PEMFC’s reliability and durability. With the ever-increasing power density of PEMFC, traditional cooling approaches including air cooling and water cooling become difficult to meet the demand for high-power heat dissipation. Therefore, phase-change cooling is proposed for fuel cell application in this work, and the potential advantages are discussed and demonstrated via a mathematical model incorporating phase-change heat transfer. The thermal management performance is evaluated by temperature uniformity, maximum temperature difference, and the cooling capacity to compare the difference between phase-change cooling and traditional methods, which demonstrates that phase-change cooling owns a greatly improved thermal management performance. In addition, a simple method to broaden the operating temperature of phase-change cooling based on one certain coolant is offered, which is pressurizing in the coolant channel to regulate the boiling temperature that could further improve the application feasibility of phase-change cooling strategy in fuel cells.