Development of flow field design of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell using in-situ impedance spectroscopy

The design of a flow field channel of a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) was investigated by computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulation and in-situ three-channel impedance spectroscopy. To investigate the efficiency of the in-situ three-channel impedance spectroscopy method, it was adopted with a heterogeneous stack, which was composed according to three different types of flow field design. The in-situ three-channel method proved its validity by showing corresponding result with that obtained from the experiments and CFD simulation at the same experimental condition. This study demonstrates that a heterogeneous stack and in-situ three-channel impedance spectroscopy are powerful tools for predicting and analyzing the performance of a fuel cell stack. Copyright (C) 2010, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.