Numerical investigation of novel block flow channel on mass transport characteristics and performance of PEMFC

This study develops a three-dimensional numerical model of a proton exchange mem-brane (PEM) fuel cell (PEMFC) to investigate the mass transport characteristics and per-formance of PEMFC with novel two-block structures in the cathode channel. The results reveal that the novel two-block structures improve the efficiency of mass transport and the performance of PEMFC. Effects of the arrangement of two-block structures and the oper-ating conditions on the PEMFC performance are investigated. It is found that the block position closer to the outlet of the channel has greater improvement of the PEMFC per-formance. The PEMFC performance increases firstly with the block structure number and then decreases, and the best number of block structures is 6 for the present study. The block channel has more evident effect when the PEMFC operated under high current density and small stoichiometric ratio, and the block channel is effective in a wide relative humidity (RH) range.& COPY; 2023 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.