Investigation of Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell Performance with Pin-Type Flow Field Design

The shape and geometry of the flow field have considerable effects on the transfer rate of the reactants toward the catalyst layer and consequently the performance of the polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell. In this study, a novel PEM fuel cell with pin-type flow field is proposed in order to reduce the wake regions, increase the oxygen transfer rate into the catalyst layer and the current density, and finally improve the fuel cell performance. To assess the performance of the proposed fuel cell, it is numerically simulated based on the computational fluid dynamics and the single-domain approaches and compared with that of a PEM fuel cell with parallel channels for the same geometry and operating conditions. The numerical results show that oxygen transfer rate into the gas diffusion layer and cathode catalyst layer is increased due to the existence of the pins in the proposed flow field. Comparing with the parallel channels, the pin-type fuel cell has an improved performance as the current density is increased, especially for high current density value. However, the pin-type fuel cell exhibits a higher pressure drop and non-uniform distribution of the current density.