Comparison of active and passive cooling of proton exchange membrane fuel cell using a multiphase model

Abstract

One of the challenges to increase the life and improve the performance of the proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEM) fuel cell is to use an appropriate cell cooling method. Proper cooling is important in maintaining a uniform temperature distribution and preservation of membrane water content to in order to prevent local hot spots and for high cell performance. In this work, three-dimensional multiphase numerical models of proton exchange membrane fuel cells using active (liquid cooling) and passive (heat pipes) cooling methods have been developed, wherein a heat pipe model was first simulated by simulink to determine the heat extraction capacity of the heat pipe. A 4-way serpentine flow field was employed as the typical flow field for gas channels and cooling channels. The results show that the use of heat pipe cooling, in addition to maintaining high water content and thus reducing membrane resistance and increasing cell performance, imposes less parasitic load on the cell power generation system than water cooling. © 2022 Elsevier Ltd