Computational Fluid Dynamics Study on Uniform Cooling of Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells by Parallel Multi-pass Serpentine Flow Fields

Thermal management is important for enhancing the performance and durability of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) and is taken into account in the design of PEMFCs. In general, cooling pates with circulating liquid coolant (water) are inserted between several unit cells to exhaust the reaction heat from PEMFCs. In this study, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations were performed to characterize the uniform cooling performance of parallel multipass serpentine flow fields (MPSFFs) that were used as coolant flow channels in PEMFCs. The cooling performances of conventional serpentine and parallel flow fields were also evaluated for the purpose of comparison. The CFD results showed that the use of parallel MPSFFs can help reduce the temperature nonuniformity, and thus, can favorably enhance the performance and durability of PEMFCs.