Improving Performance and Decreasing of Cooling System Volume in Low Temperature PEM Fuel Cell Using Nanofluid

Correct heat management is one of the major problems in fuel cells that should be somehow solved. The performance of the cell at high temperatures causes the membranes to dry, increasing ohmic resistance of cell, shrinking and rupture of membranes and at low temperatures decrease the reaction rate, voltage, efficiency, output power, as well as condensation of water and occurrence of flooding at the cathode side. Increasing power in fuel cells associated with increasing the number of cells in a fuel cell stack. By increasing power, high flow rate of the cooling fluid is required to dissipate more generated heat. Increasing cooling flow rate increases the volume of the cooling system, parasitic power and reduces the efficiency of the stack. In this paper, using of nanofluids as an approach to solving this problem is presented and its effect on reducing the parasitic power is investigated. The results showed with using mixture of water and 2% volume fraction of Al2O3, at Re=6000 the temperature difference of all parts of flow field compare to inlet is smaller than 5℃. At the case that base fluid is used, this goal achieved at Re=9000.