Development of cathode cooling fins with a multi-hole structure for open-cathode polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells

The main purpose of this study is to investigate how a newly designed cooling fin affects the performance of open-cathode polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (OC-PEMFCs) at high current densities with the aid of experiments and simulation. The novel fin, denoted as the CASE-1 cooling fin, comprises a multi-hole structure (MHS) in the rib region. An OC-PEMFC stack with the CASE-1 cooling fins exhibits a higher performance under higher current densities than that with conventional cooling fins, which are referred to as CASE-2 cooling fins. Owing to several dead zones at the fan duct, sufficient air is not provided to the edges of the OC-PEMFC stack, where the 1st and 20th fuel cells are located; however, the MHS mitigates this decrease in the performance at the edge cells. Results of numerical simulation show that the oxygen mole fraction for CASE-1 cooling fins is higher than that for CASE-2 at the gas diffusion layer/membrane electrode assembly (GDL/MEA) interface indicating uniform oxygen distribution throughout the MEA area. These all results indicate that the CASE-1 cooling fin induces a positive oxygen distribution, resulting in a significant improvement in performance at higher current densities.