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Performance improvement for proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) with different parallel flow fields by optimizing ribs arrangement

Author

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  • Wang, Changjiang
  • Yu, Zeting
  • Liu, Wenjing
  • Qiao, Yanjin
  • Wang, Daohan
  • Cui, Bo
  • Gao, Hui

Abstract

The flow field structure plays a significant role in the operation, reliability and durability of PEMFC. This study first investigates and compares the parallel flow field ribs arrangement (namely Left-in-Right-out (LR), Middle-in-Middle-out (MM), Left-in-Middle-out (LM) and Middle-in-Right-out (MR)) using the collaborative optimization framework which is integrated with the computational fluid dynamics (CFD), artificial neural network (ANN) surrogate model and non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm-II (NSGA-II). The results show that the net power output (Pnet) of the optimized flow field ribs arrangement is increased compared with the basic case, respectively. Then, two other configurations (named LRM and MLR-OP) are proposed to improve the oxygen distribution non-uniformity. Compared with the LM, the power density of LRM is increased by 3.28 % and the pressure drop is reduced by 13.79 %. The power density of the MLR-OP is increased by 15.12 % and 11.98 %, and the pressure drop is reduced by 52.05 % and 58.03 % compared with the MM and MR. Moreover, it is found the sub-channel pressure changes consistently with the rib distance which is validated by MLR-OP’ configuration, the optimized parallel flow fields have excellent mass transfer performance and avoid complex structures, which provide references for the structural design of PEMFC.

Suggested Citation

  • Wang, Changjiang & Yu, Zeting & Liu, Wenjing & Qiao, Yanjin & Wang, Daohan & Cui, Bo & Gao, Hui, 2025. "Performance improvement for proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) with different parallel flow fields by optimizing ribs arrangement," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 322(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:energy:v:322:y:2025:i:c:s0360544225012277
    DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2025.135585
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