Numerical investigation of novel bio-inspired flow field design scheme for PEM fuel cell

Abstract

The uniformity of reaction gas distribution and water drainage performance may be influenced by the flow field structure and the total distance between the inlet and outlet of a proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell. Therefore, the design of flow field plates may dominate the performance of fuel cells to some extent. A new kind of flow field plate structure is presented here based upon the principle of bio-inspiration and Murray's law in view of a PEM fuel cell as the object; moreover, numerical simulation is carried out to determine performance. In addition, contour plot comparisons between the bio-inspired and parallel flow fields of the PEM fuel cell indicate that the molar concentration distributions (O2, H2, and H2O) are more even for the bio-inspired design. Pressure and temperature distributions are also compared. The novel flow field plate structure not only improves the uniformity of reaction gas distribution but also reduces the pressure drop through the flow channels, and the maximum output power of the fuel cell with the novel structure rises by 114% under the same conditions and geometric scale compared to the fuel cell with the parallel flow field.