Influence Of Metal Foam Flow Field On The Performance Of Proton Exchange Membrance Fuel Cells For Vehicles

Proton exchange membrane fuel cell(PEMFC)is a kind of through electrochemical reaction can be directly to the chemical energy of fuel into electricity clean power,because of its strong adaptability,wide source of fuel,clean zero pollution,high energy conversion rate and advantages of cold start quickly,is considered to be suitable for human development and environmental requirements of modern ideal power supply.The flow field is the most important component of PEMFC,which affects its performance and operating efficiency.The traditional flow mainly focuses on simple serpentine flow passage.In this paper,nickel metal foam flow fields with different unit sizes of450?m,580?m,800?m and 1200?m are used to replace the traditional serpentine flow field.The fuel cell performance of metal foam flow fields with different unit sizes is compared through experimental and numerical simulation methods.In this paper,the numerical simulation method is used to simulate the traditional snake-shaped flow field and the nickel metal foam flow field with four different unit sizes,and the results of the numerical simulation are further verified through experiments,so as to obtain the optimal unit size of the metal foam flow field and make the fuel cell performance optimal.The main work and achievements of this paper areas follows:In COMSOL Multiphysics software,the single-channel battery geometric model of traditional snake-like flow field and nickel metal foam flow field with four different unit sizes was established and the computational grid was divided.Numerical simulation was used for simulation calculation to obtain the polarization curve and power density curve of single-channel battery.Under the same geometry model size and simulation condition,the nickel metal foam flow field PEMFC of450?m,580?m,800?m and 1200?m was simulated and calculated,and the polarization curve and power density curve of the metal foam flow field battery were obtained.The traditional serpentine flow field and four cell size nickel metal foam flow field cells were tested by experimental method,and the voltage and current values were recorded,so as to obtain the respective polarization curves and power density curves.The results show that the performance of PEMFC using metal foam flow field is improved to some extent compared with that of the traditional serpentine flow field,and the metal foam flow field with the cell size of 580?m has the best performance compared with the traditional serpentine flow field.