Thermal performance assessment of a low power proton exchange membrane fuel cell with various air-cooled channels

Abstract

One of the important parts of the air-cooled fuel cell is the cathode, the design of which is of great importance and should be such that the temperature and current density are as uniform as possible. This study considers two different configurations (circular and square) with various arrangements (1 × 5, 2 × 10, 3 × 15 and 4 × 20) for the cooling channels. The focus of this study is on temperature distribution, power density and entropy generation in an air-cooled fuel cell. Therefore, the aim of this study is to compare different air-cooled channels on the PEM fuel cell performance. The results show that in terms of uniformity of temperature distribution and minimum temperature, using a circular channel is preferable to a square channel, but it has the lowest power density and the highest entropy generation. The results show that under different environmental conditions, it is possible to control the thermal management in the fuel cell by choosing the number of different channels.

Keywords

• PEM fuel cell
• Entropy
• Air-cooled
• Cathode
• Thermal