Annals of the Assembly for International Heat Transfer Conference 13

ISBN 1-56700-225-0 / CD 1-56700-226-9

Year 2006

Wen-Quan Tao
Experimental Center of Thermal & Fluid Science, School of Energy & Power Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University

Y. W. Tan
Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, China

W. Jiang
Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, China

Z. Y. Li
State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Flow in Power Engineering, School of Energy & Power Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong Uniersity, Xi'an, Shaanxi 710049, China

Ya-Ling He
School of Energy and Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University,

Flow configuration in the bi-polar plates is one of the important factors affecting the performance of PEM fuel cell. In this work measurements are conducted for three series of polar plates with different flow configurations. These are plates of parallel channels with identical depth, plates of parallel channels with identical rib width and plates of single to four serpentine channels. For all the polar plates studied, the ratio of the polar plate backbone area contacting with the MEA(rib area) over the project flowing area through the channels remains the same. The major findings are as follows. (1) For the polar plate with parallel flow either increasing the channel depth or increasing the channel number both can enhance fuel cell performance with the increase in channel number being the better; (2) Among the four serpentine flow configurations studied (mono-serpentine, bi-serpentine, tri-serpentine and quad-serpentine), the tri-serpentine one is the best.

ENR-07 pages DOI: 10.1615/IHTC13.p24.70 Download article

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