Modeling of flow and transport processes occurred in a typical polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC)

Abstract

Abstract. In the present work, a three dimensional model examining the fluid flow along with the fundamental transport phenomena occurring in a typical polymer electrolyte fuel cell (PEMFC), i.e. heat transfer, mass transport and charge transfer, has been developed. The flow field was simulated according to the well known Navier-Stokes equations, while the heat transfer was described by the typical conduction/convection equation and the mass transport by the convection/diffusion one. Furthermore, reaction kinetics were studied by the Butler-Volmer equation for the heterogeneous reactions occurring at the porous electrodes. The developed model was numerically solved by using the commercially available CFD package CFD-RC © , which is based on the multi-step finite volume method. The fuel cell performance in terms of velocity, temperature, mass fractions of active compounds and electric field has been investigated as well. Introduction Fuel cell systems are energy devices that directly convert the chemical energy of the feeding fuel into electricity without Carnot limitation, being suitable for stationary and mobile applications. Due to the high conversion efficiencies and the negligible environmental impact, fuel cell technology is considered as one of the most promising to contribute essentially to generation of electrical power in the near futur