Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy (한국수소및신에너지학회논문집)

The Korean Hydrogen and New Energy Society (한국수소및신에너지학회)
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Optimal Sizing of the Manifolds in a PEM Fuel Cell Stack using Three-Dimensional CFD Simulations

3차원 CFD 시뮬레이션을 활용한 고분자전해질 연료전지 스택의 매니폴드 크기 최적화

  • 정지훈 (GS칼텍스 중앙기술연구소) ;
  • 한인수 (GS칼텍스 중앙기술연구소) ;
  • 신현길 (GS칼텍스 중앙기술연구소)
  • Received : 2013.09.27
  • Accepted : 2013.10.31
  • Published : 2013.10.31
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Abstract

Polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell stacks are constructed by stacking several to hundreds of unit cells depending on their power outputs required. Fuel and oxidant are distributed to each cell of a stack through so-called manifolds during its operation. In designing a stack, if the manifold sizes are too small, the fuel and oxidant would be maldistributed among the cells. On the contrary, the volume of the stack would be too large if the manifolds are oversized. In this study, we present a three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model with a geometrically simplified flow-field to optimize the size of the manifolds of a stack. The flow-field of the stack was simplified as a straight channel filled with porous media to reduce the number of computational meshes required for CFD simulations. Using the CFD model, we determined the size of the oxidant manifold of a 30 kW-class PEM fuel cell stack that comprises 99 cells. The stack with the optimal manifold size showed a quite uniform distribution of the cell voltages across the entire cells.

Keywords

References

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Cited by

  1. Development of a 25kW-Class PEM Fuel Cell System for the Propulsion of a Leisure Boat vol.25, pp.3, 2014, https://doi.org/10.7316/KHNES.2014.25.3.271
  2. Modeling of a PEM Fuel Cell Stack using Partial Least Squares and Artificial Neural Networks vol.53, pp.2, 2015, https://doi.org/10.9713/kcer.2015.53.2.236