A Novel Design of Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell

A fuel cell is an energy conversion device that converts the chemical energy of fuel into electrical energy. Fuel cells operate continuously if they are provided with the reactant gases, not like batteries. Fuel cells can provide power in wide range. Fuel cells are environmentally friendly; the by-product of hydrogen/oxygen fuel cell is water and heat. This paper will show a numerical modeling for this spiral design of high pressurized Polymer Electrolyte Membrane fuel cell. Numerical modeling requires understanding the physical principles of fuel cells, fluid flow, heat transfer, mass transfer in porous media, electrochemical reactions, multiphase flow with phase change, transport of current and potential field in porous media and solid conducting regions, and water transport across the polymer membrane; and this will result in optimal design process. This paper will show fuel cell models that are used in this analysis. Such as; electrochemical model: predicts local current density, voltage distributions. Potential field model: predicts current and voltage in porous and solid conducting regions. Multiphase mixture model: predicts liquid water and gas flow in the porous diffusion layers. Thin film multiphase model: tracks liquid water flow in gas flow passages. The numerical results of the theoretical modeling are shown in this paper. This paper shows the contour plots of mole fraction of H₂O, H₂, and O₂. Results in this research include the species concentration of H₂O, H₂, and O₂. This research also shows the plot of mass concentration of H₂O, H₂ and O₂.