Improved performance of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell using leaf-baffle flow field design

Abstract

The hydrogen fuel cell is an environmentally friendly alternative energy converter. Its performance is quite influenced by the geometry of the flow field. This study proposes a leaf-baffle flow field design with experimental testing compared to conventional models. Experiments were carried out on a single cell Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell with an active area of 25 cm², with flow field design variations of parallel, leaf, and leaf-baffle on the cathode. The performance of each design is compared with the polarisation and power density graphs, the pressure drop due to energy loss is also compared. The results showed that the leaf-baffle design produces the best performance, increased by 37.14% compared to parallels. Furthermore, to obtain better performance, the ratio of the reactants velocity to the branch length needs to be considered for designing the flow field.

KEYWORDS:

• Leaf baffle
• flow field
• fuel cell
• velocity distribution
• pressure drop

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge doctoral scholarship from Lembaga Pengelola Dana Pendidikan (LPDP) Ministry of Finance of Republic of Indonesia to A’rasy Fahruddin, and facility support from the Direktorat Riset dan Pengabdian kepada Masyarakat (DRPM) and Department of Mechanical Engineering Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember (ITS) Indonesia.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The authors gratefully acknowledge doctoral scholarship from Lembaga Pengelola Dana Pendidikan (LPDP), Ministry of Finance of Republic of Indonesia to A’rasy Fahruddin.