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COMBINED NUMERICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF LIQUID WATER DISTRIBUTION INSIDE PEMFCS

The main objectives for the design of modern PEM fuel cells are to ensure minimize costs and size and ensure operation at elevated power densities with minimized accumulation of water inside the flow fields. Currently, number of authors are dedicated to increasing the flow field complexity, resulting in higher performance but also elevated manufacturing costs. By minimizing the complexity of the flow field and avoiding complex 3D structures, the main candidate still remains the serpentine flow field due to favorable characteristics of low pressure drop and good water removal. Due to discrepancies found in literature, in this work, the focus is on investigation of the liquid water accumulation inside the flow field of PEM fuel cell using up- to-date numerical model and full-scale single cell geometry with active area of 25 cm2, experimentally and numerically using computational fluid dynamics modeling. The initial simulation model is calibrated using experimental data and later modified according to literature recommendations, outlining the influence of designs on water accumulation, resulting in significant performance improvement using simple geometry. The future goal of the research is upscaling the developed geometry for 50 cm2 active area and comparing the numerical results with experimentally obtained locally resolved current density distribution.

PEM Fuel Cells ; Computational Fluid Dynamics ; Experimental ; Flow Fields

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