Design of Forced Air-cooling Structure for Elevated Temperature PEMFC

Proper operating temperature range and homogenous temperature distribution are important to proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). For the elevated temperature PEMFC water is not suitable to be used as coolant due to high operating temperature. Instead, air can be chosen as coolant because of the relative large temperature difference between fuel cell itself and the ambient air. In this paper, four types of forced air-cooling modes for elevated temperature PEMFC were discussed, and influences of other factors such as cooling air inlet velocity and thermal conductivity of bipolar plate material and fins on heat dissipation and temperature distribution were investigated. Three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method was employed to investigate fluid flow and heat transfer in the elevated temperature PEMFC on a 250 cm2 single cell level. The temperature distribution fields on the active area of MEA were obtained and compared. One optimized mode, with suitable cooling air inlet velocity and bipolar plate material, was determined for future experimental study.