Liquid Water Removal Process in PEM Fuel Cell Cathode

In this paper, water behaviors in both the gas flow channels and porous layer at the cathode side of a PEMFC are studied. VOF (Volume of Fluid) method and UDF (User-Defined-Function) are applied. A multi-phase three-dimensional fuel cell cathode side model is constructed with a serpentine shape channel and a porous layer attached to it. Fluid will be allowed to pass through both domains as it can in the real fuel cell system. Parameters of the porous layer will be introduced to the model by the user defined function. The detailed liquid water removal process in this model will be presented, and since the water behaviors in a fuel cell is proved to be one of the most important factors influencing the fuel cell performance, this model can be a good starting point to make more advanced models to investigate fuel cell performance.