Study of an Innovative Versatile Flow Design Suitable for Fuel Cells

Abstract

Flow field plays an important role in the performances of the fuel cells, especially in large area fuel cells. In the present work, an innovative, versatile flow field, capable of combining in different conventional modes is reported and evaluated in a polymer electrolyte fuel cell (PEFC) with an active area of 150 cm2. The proposed design is capable of offering serpentine, interdigitated, counterflow, dead-end, and serpentine-interdigitated hybrid mode. Moreover, it is possible to switch over from one flow mode to another mode of flow during operation at any point of time. The flow design consists of the multichannel parallel serpentine flow (SP) field and a pair of an inlet and outlet manifolds instead of conventional single inlet and outlet manifold. Flow distribution was successfully altered without affecting the performances, and it was observed a combination of serpentine and interdigitated on the cathode side offered steady performance for more than 20 min when it was operated at a current density of 700 mA cm−2.