Session: 17-08-01: Posters Related to Energy

Paper Number: 100222

100222 - Cfd Analysis of Various Flow Channels and Parameters in a Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell 

With the increase in energy usage, the amount of fossil fuels is directly decreasing, resulting in an increase of renewable energy systems. Wind turbines, solar panels, fuel cells and various hybrid systems are among the most popular in engineering optimization design today. Fuel cells require a fuel such as hydrogen as the anode and air as the cathode in order to produce electricity. There are many types of fuel cells that operate with the same principles while differing in fuels and charged species through the electrolyte. For this research the focus is going to be designing and analyzing the polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells. The polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell uses a water-based electrolyte with platinum-based electrodes to produce dynamic power requirements. This fuel cell demands relatively low temperatures across the metal-based electrode and can only operate on pure hydrogen that is typically supplied from storage tanks or reformers. The hydrogen passes through the designed flow channel in the bipolar plates at temperatures around 80 °C. Each membrane electrode assembly produces less than 1 V, resulting in these MEAs being stacked together with the bipolar plates separating it from neighboring cells. The flow design in the MEA are rapidly being analyzed and designed to optimize the distributions throughout the flow field on the PEMFC. These fuel cells are generally used in transportation applications. This research is focused on designing the flow channels with varying parameters and pathways in order to increase conductivity. The bipolar plates are analyzed with differing flow pathways, widths, length and materials. A computational flow design is required to understand the effects of distributions across the plates. ANSYS is utilized in all CFD simulations, providing thermal energy distributions as well as the flow vectors throughout the flow channels. The simulation will consist of varying bipolar plates parameters, pathways and materials as well as analyzing the changing effects of flow and temperature parameters. An optimal flow plate design will provide uniform distributions, low pressure drops and provide greater electronic conductivity. The purpose of this research is to analyze and compare various bipolar plate designs using CFD simulation to collect data that will be compared to numerical and experimental data. The numerical results are from governing equations with boundary conditions based on the design and parameters. The fuel cell is constructed with the optimal flow channels in order to collect experimental data to compare. Future work will consist of expanding CFD and experimental simulations in order to analyze various parameters that are held constant in this study.

Presenting Author: Dakota Messer Tarleton State University

Presenting Author Biography: Tarleton Mechanical Engineer Graduate Student

Authors:

Dakota Messer Tarleton State University