Visualization and analysis of mass transfer phenomena in a three dimensional domain of a low temperature PEMFC

Abstract

The proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is considered as a potential candidate of the hydrogen applications on the power sources in the future. This work depicts the steady-state single phase transport of reactants and water in a three dimensional computational domain of a low temperature Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell. The model computational domain includes anode and cathode flow channels, gas diffusion layers, membrane and catalyst layers. Both anode and cathode mass and momentum transport phenomena in the flow channels, gas diffusion layers (GDLs) and porous electrodes are included in this study. A Computational Fluid Dynamics code using the finite element method (FEM) is applied on the studied domain. Water analysis in the membrane will be discussed in further works. Mass transfer analysis focused on the air flow velocity parameter, a range of values is applied to observe its effect Simulation results show an important molar concentration of water in the cathode side compared to a low one in the anode side. A good oxygen concentration is obtained with an air flow velocity of 0.5 m/s, increasing this value may cause the membrane flooding phenomena.