A comparative research on the flow distribution characteristics of anode, cathode and coolant in a commercial-size PEMFC stack

The even distributions of anode, cathode and coolant are of critical significance to the efficiency and lifetime of proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) stacks. In this work, a multi-scale approach with upscaling strategy is developed for simulating the flow distribution, along with an efficient algorithm for calibrating the viscous and inertial resistance coefficients in the porous medium model. The proposed framework effectively balances computational accuracy and efficiency in full-scale stack simulations. The flow distribution characteristics of the anode, cathode, and coolant in a commercial-size PEMFC stack with 164 single cells are simulated and compared. Results suggest that the proposed algorithm can calibrate the resistance coefficients within only 11 inner iterations, offering a new approach for rapid and reliable parameter identification. For the studied PEMFC stack, the consideration of the species mass fraction in anode is of crucial importance to the trend of the flow distribution curve. The anode has the most uniform flow distribution, followed by the coolant, while the cathode has the worst flow distribution due to the vortex-dominant flow. The flow distribution uniformity of the U-type configuration generally surpasses that of the Z-type configuration. The U-type configuration may allow for the enhancement of flow distribution uniformity through the design of the eccentricity of end socket, while for the Z-type configuration, the eccentricity always worsens the flow distribution. The anode, cathode and coolant are recommended to be designed as U-type configuration with the eccentricities of 0, 0 and 0.6, respectively, providing reference for the design of the manifold.