Simulation On Performance Curves And Optimization Of Flow Field Of Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell

Proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is one of the most compelling energy conversion devices during existing fuel cell. Compared with thermal power and hydropower, the PEM fuel cell is the most competitive power generation device. It came into power market gradually with huge advantages, such as high efficiency, environmental friendly, low noise, low operation temperature and so on. But, such problems like production costs, hydrogen storage and limited cell working temperature would prevent fuel cell from moving forward.The paper introduced the development and application of PEM fuel cell briefly, described the working principle and operating steps of the whole fuel cell testing platform that including computer control system and other components, and introduced the problem of water and thermal management. The core of the paper studied the performance of PEM fuel cell with experimental and simulation, analyzed different factors influence on PEM fuel cell performance, such as cell temperature, gas humidification temperature, catalyst, gas pressure and so on.The experimental used the fuel cell electrochemical testing system. According to flow channel depth of electrode structure, the experiment designed four different depth flow channel and studied them influence on fuel cell performance. The experimental used impedance analysis model to analyzing the causes of fuel cell performance changes and got the relationship between electrode structure and water content inside cell. The experimental results showed that the performance of the fuel cell with flow channel depth change from2mm to0.9mm (inlet depth2mm, outlet depth0.9mm) was better than other fuel cells, and this structure managed the water content inside the fuel cell better.The simulation added membrane water content and the average concentration of cathode reaction gas into existing semi-empirical model and optimized it. The model adopted combination segmentation with mathematical method. After a great deal of calculation and repeated verification, the paper got a high accurate rate model and quantitative relations between new operating parameters and PEM fuel cell performance. The results showed that the experimental results and simulating results had good agreement. When the cell temperature was lower than the gas humidification temperature, the drooping extent of the performance curve corresponding to the concentration polarization decreases with the decrease of temperature differences between the cell temperature and gas humidification temperature; when the cell temperature is equal to or higher than the gas humidification temperature, the slope of straight line in performance curve increases with the increase of the temperature differences between the cell temperature and gas humidification temperature. The performance of the PEM fuel cell increases with the increase of gas pressure.