A CFD Modeling Study Based on Relative Humidity Effect on PEMFC Performance

Year 2021, Volume: 5 Issue: 3, 192 - 198, 30.09.2021

Safiye Nur Özdemir , İmdat Taymaz

https://doi.org/10.30939/ijastech..931807

Cited By: 2

Abstract

Water management is a crucial parameter that significantly affects the uniform distributions of current density and cell voltage, durability, and working life of the fuel cell. In this investigation, three dimensional steady model was proposed for Z-type and U-type geometry and numerical simulations were fulfilled using commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) ANSYS FLUENT to investigate the impact of reactant humidification on cell performance and water manage-ment. CFD results were shown on polarization and power curves to observe the relative humidity (RH) effect on maximum power point tracking. The results demonstrated that cell performance could be improved significantly by decreas-ing RH of the cathode inlet gas from 100 to 10% at high current densities. In-creasing RH of the anode gas inlet from 10 to 100% at low operating voltages re-sulted in a superior performance. It was noted that convenient humidification of the reactant was essential.

Keywords

CFD Model;, PEMFC;, ; Relative Humidity;, Water Management

Supporting Institution

-

Project Number

-

Thanks

-

References

• [1] Husar, A., Strahl, S. and Riera, J. (2012) ‘Experimental characteri-zation methodology for the identification of voltage losses of PEMFC: Applied to an open cathode stack’, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy. Elsevier Ltd, 37(8), pp. 7309–7315.
• [2] Pei, P. et al. (2016) ‘A review on water fault diagnosis of PEMFC associated with the pressure drop’, Applied Energy. Elsevier Ltd, 173, pp. 366–385.
• [3] Zhang, G. and Jiao, K. (2018) ‘Three-dimensional multi-phase simulation of PEMFC at high current density utilizing Eulerian-Eulerian model and two-fluid model’, Energy Conversion and Management. Elsevier, 176(June), pp. 409–421.
• [4] Shyu, J. C., Hsueh, K. L. and Tsau, F. (2011) ‘Performance of proton exchange membrane fuel cells at elevated temperature’, En-ergy Conversion and Management. Elsevier Ltd, 52(12), pp. 3415–3424.
• [5] Ahmed, D. H. et al. (2008) ‘Reactants flow behavior and water management for different current densities in PEMFC’, Interna-tional Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, 51(7–8), pp. 2006–2019.
• [6] Jian, Q. fei, Ma, G. qing and Qiu, X. liang (2014) ‘Influences of gas relative humidity on the temperature of membrane in PEMFC with interdigitated flow field’, Renewable Energy, 62, pp. 129–136.
• [7] Yuan, W. et al. (2010) ‘Model prediction of effects of operating parameters on proton exchange membrane fuel cell performance’, Renewable Energy, 35(3).
• [8] Zhang, Jianlu et al. (2008) ‘PEM fuel cell relative humidity (RH) and its effect on performance at high temperatures’, Electrochimica Acta, 53(16), pp. 5315–5321.
• [9] Mohammadzadeh, K. et al. (2019) ‘A numerical model for estima-tion of water droplet size in the anode channel of a proton exchange membrane fuel cell’, Journal of Energy Storage. Elsevier, 26(October), p. 101021.
• [10] Wang, Y. et al. (2020) ‘Optimization of reactants relative humidity for high performance of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells with co-flow and counter-flow configurations’, Energy Conversion and Management. Elsevier, 205(August 2019), p. 112369
• [11] Iranzo, A. et al. (2015) ‘Investigation of the liquid water distribu-tions in a 50cm2 PEM fuel cell: Effects of reactants relative humidi-ty, current density, and cathode stoichiometry’, Energy. Elsevier Ltd, 82, pp. 914–921.
• [12] Ozen, D. N., Timurkutluk, B. and Altinisik, K. (2016) ‘Effects of operation temperature and reactant gas humidity levels on perfor-mance of PEM fuel cells’, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Re-views. Elsevier, 59, pp. 1298–1306.
• [13] Jeon, D. H. et al. (2011) ‘The effect of relative humidity of the cathode on the performance and the uniformity of PEM fuel cells’, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy. Elsevier Ltd, 36(19), pp. 12499–12511.
• [14] Wang, L. et al. (2003) ‘A parametric study of PEM fuel cell per-formances’, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, 28(11), pp. 1263–1272.
• [15] Kahveci, E. E. and Taymaz, I. (2015) ‘Effect of Humidification of the Reactant Gases in the Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell’, Journal of Clean Energy Technologies, 3(5), pp. 356–359.
• [16] Cheng, S. J., Miao, J. M. and Wu, S. J. (2012) ‘Investigating the effects of operational factors on PEMFC performance based on CFD simulations using a three-level full-factorial design’, Renewa-ble Energy. Elsevier Ltd, 39(1), pp. 250–260.