Coupling study of large-scale commercial proton exchange membrane fuel cell with novel convergent-divergent flow field and multiple coolant flow fields

Effective thermal management is particularly pivotal for the commercial proton exchange membrane fuel cell. The previous researches on coolant flow field design are always limited by scale and lack the coupling investigation with the novel gas channels, leading to the neglect of the unique temperature distribution and heat transfer characteristics in large-scale. Hence, the three-dimensional multiphase models are developed by proposing a novel convergent–divergent flow field and introducing two cooling layouts with five different coolant channel structures. The results indicate that the novel structure of the convergent–divergent pattern not only improves the net output power density by 23.65 %, but also is more conducive to removing waste heat and better temperature uniformity. The temperature difference between the membrane electrode assembly and the coolant determines the cooling capacity based on the different factors. The ability of flow fluctuation induction demonstrates the significant advantage under the limited coolant mass flow rate. Compared to layout 1, layout 2 can approximately reduce the max temperature by 5 K, improve temperature uniformity by 55 % and enhance thermal-economic index by 17. This study can provide innovative guidance for the coupling design and optimization of next-generation high power density proton exchange membrane fuel cell with novel gas channel structure and coolant flow field.