Effects of Bipolar Plate Material and Impurities in Reactant Gases on PEM Fuel Cell Performance

A low cost bipolar plate materials with a high fuel cell performance is important for the establishment of Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM ) fuel cells into the competitive world market. In this research, the effect of different bipolar plates material such as Aluminum (Al), Copper (Cu), and Stainless Steel (SS) of a single stack of proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells was investigated both numerically and experimentally. Firstly, a three dimensional (3D) PEM fuel cell model was developed, and simulations were conducted using commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) ANSYS FLUENT to examine the effect of each bipolar plate materials on cell performance. Along with cell performance, significant parameters distributions like temperature, pressure, a mass fraction of hydrogen, oxygen, and water is presented. Then, an experimental study of a single cell of Al, Cu, and SS bipolar plate material was used in the verification of the numerical investigation. Finally, polarization curves of numerical and experimental results was compared for validation, and the result shows that Al serpentine bipolar plate material performed better than Cu and SS materials. The outcome of the investigation was in tandem to the fact that due to adsorption on metal surfaces, hydrogen molecules is more stable on Al surface than Cu and SS surfaces.

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Effect of Width of a Serpentine Flow Channel on PEM Fuel Cell Performance

SSRN Electronic Journal ◽

10.2139/ssrn.3822344 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Srinivasa Reddy Badduri ◽

Ramesh Siripuram ◽

Naga Srinivasulu G ◽

Srinivasa Rao S

Keyword(s):

Fuel Cell ◽

Pem Fuel Cell ◽

Flow Channel ◽

Cell Performance ◽

Fuel Cell Performance ◽

Serpentine Flow Channel

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Nitrogen doped graphene/cobalt-based catalyst layers of a PEM fuel cell: Performance evaluation and multi-objective optimization

Korean Journal of Chemical Engineering ◽

10.1007/s11814-017-0202-2 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 34 (11) ◽

pp. 2978-2983 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Bagher Kazeminasab ◽

Soosan Rowshanzamir ◽

Hossein Ghadamian

Keyword(s):

Performance Evaluation ◽

Fuel Cell ◽

Pem Fuel Cell ◽

Cell Performance ◽

Multi Objective Optimization ◽

Fuel Cell Performance ◽

Nitrogen Doped ◽

Catalyst Layers ◽

Nitrogen Doped Graphene ◽

Doped Graphene

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Experimental Results of a PEM System Operated on Hydrogen and Reformate

Journal of Fuel Cell Science and Technology ◽

10.1115/1.2784324 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 5 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

M. Minutillo ◽

E. Jannelli ◽

F. Tunzio

Keyword(s):

Fuel Cell ◽

Natural Gas ◽

Large Scale ◽

Pem Fuel Cell ◽

Proton Exchange ◽

Operating Conditions ◽

Cell Performance ◽

Pure Hydrogen ◽

Test Bed ◽

Fuel Cell Performance

The main objective of this study is to evaluate the performance of a proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell generator operating for residential applications. The fuel cell performance has been evaluated using the test bed of the University of Cassino. The experimental activity has been focused to evaluate the performance in different operating conditions: stack temperature, feeding mode, and fuel composition. In order to use PEM fuel cell technology on a large scale, for an electric power distributed generation, it could be necessary to feed fuel cells with conventional fuel, such as natural gas, to generate hydrogen in situ because currently the infrastructure for the distribution of hydrogen is almost nonexistent. Therefore, the fuel cell performance has been evaluated both using pure hydrogen and reformate gas produced by a natural gas reforming system.

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