Optimal design of a cathode flow field for performance enhancement of PEM fuel cell

Flow field design plays a key role in enhancing the performance of proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). In this work, the cathode flow field is optimized to enhance the performance of PEMFC by improving the capacity of mass transfer and water removal, and a three-dimensional, two-phase, isothermal numerical model is established to evaluate its performance. Additionally, visualization experiment is carried out to verify the simulation results. It shows that the opposite sinusoidal wave flow fields (OSWFFs) with single-inlet, dual-inlet and the block provide 6.86%, 1.26%, and 2.31% performance enhancement, respectively, compared with the parallel flow fields (PFFs), which positively affects the mass transfer capacity and water removal performance. Among them, the dual-inlet OSWFF with block is the most helpful for performance enhancement, with an enhancement of 9.30% at 2.2 A cm−2 compared to the PFF. Moreover, Pearson correlation coefficient (PCC) is proposed for the first time to evaluate the correlation between each index and PEMFC performance. The comparison of stoichiometric ratios shows that the more significantly correlated indexes contribute to the dual-inlet OSWFF outperforming the single-inlet OSWFF at high inlet velocities, verifying the applicability of PCC in PEMFC.