Experimental investigation of irreversibility of a proton exchange membrane fuel cell at different channel geometry

The geometry of the channels of a fuel cell is very important for performance and efficiency of it. For this reason, a thermodynamic analysis is performed for a PEM fuel cell at different channel geometry that three different fuel cells with rectangular, elliptical and triangular serpentine channels have constructed. The active area of each cell is 25 cm(2) that its weight is 1300 g. The material of the gas diffusion layer is carbon clothes, the membrane is Nafion 112 and the catalyst layer is a plane with 0.004 g/cm(2) Platinum. Also a test bench designed and constructed for testing the cell and a series of experiments are carried out to investigate the influence of the geometry of the cell on irreversibility under the normal conditions. The results show that the performance of the cell at = 55 A degrees C, = 55 A degrees C, = 60 A degrees C, oxygen flow rate = 0.5 L/min, hydrogen flow rate = 0.3 L/min and P = 2.905 bar is higher about 12 % and 18 % when the geometry of the channels is rectangular in comparison of elliptical and triangular channels and the irreversibility is lower about 17 % and 33 % when the geometry of the channels is rectangular in comparison of elliptical and triangular channels.