• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.288-297
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• 2009

A serpentine channel geometry often used in a fuel cell has a strong pressure gradient between adjacent channels in specific regions. The pressure gradient helps some amount of reactant gas penetrate through a gas diffusion layer(GDL). As a result, the overall serpentine flow structure is slightly different from the intention of a designer. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of serpentine flow structure on current density distribution. By using a commercial code, STAR-CD, a numerical simulation is performed to analyze the fuel cell with high aspect ratio of active area. To increase the accuracy of the numerical simulation, GDL permeabilities are measured with various compressive forces. Three-dimensional flow field and current density distribution are calculated. For the verification of the numerical simulation results, water condensation process in the cathode channel is observed through a transparent bipolar plate. The result of this study shows that the region of relatively low current density corresponds that of dropwise condensation in cathode channels.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.293-299
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• 2012

The serpentine flow channel is widely used in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) to prevent flooding phenomena because it effectively removes liquid water in the flow channel. The pressure drop between inlet and outlet increases as compared with straight channels due to minor losses associated with the corners of the turning configurations. This results in a strong pressure gradient between adjacent channels in specific regions, where some amount of reactant gas can be delivered to catalyst layers by convection through a gas diffusion layer (GDL). The enhancement of the convective flow in the GDL, so-called bypass flow, affects fuel cell performance since the bypass flow influences the reactant transport and thus its concentration over the active area. In the present paper, for the bipolar plate design, a simple analytic model has been proposed to predict the bypass flow in the serpentine type flow channels and validated with three-dimensional numerical simulation results.

• Journal of the Korean Electrochemical Society
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.74-82
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• 2012

Proton exchange membrane fuel cell performance is changed by the complicated physical phenomenon. In this study, water discharge performance of proton exchange membrane fuel cell were performed numerically to compare serpentine channel flow fields of 5-pass 4-turn serpentine and 25 $cm^2$ reaction surface between with and without sub-channel at the rib. Through the supplement of sub channel flow field, it is shown from the results that water removal characteristic inside channel improves because the flow direction of under-rib convection is changed into the sub channel. Reacting gases supplied from entrance disperse into sub channel flow field and electrochemical reaction occurs uniformly over the reaction surface. The results obtained that total current density distributions become uniform because residence time of reacting gases traveling to sub-channel flow field is longer than to main channel.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.363-363
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• 2001

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.147-151
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• 2007

A serpentine channel geometry often used in a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell has a strong pressure gradient between adjacent channels in specific regions. The pressure gradient helps some amount of reactant gas penetrate through a gas diffusion layer(GDL). As a result, the overall serpentine flow structure is slightly different from intention of a designer. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of serpentine flow structure on current density distribution. By using a commercial code, STAR-CD, a numerical simulation is performed to analyze the fuel cell with relatively high aspect ratio active area. To increase the accuracy of the numerical simulation, GDL permeabilities are measured with various compression conditions. Three-dimensional flow field and current density distribution are calculated. For the verification of the numerical simulation results, water condensation process in the cathode channel is observed through a transparent bipolar plate. The result of this study shows that the region of relatively low current density corresponds to that of dropwise condensation in cathode channels.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.96.1-96.1
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• 2005

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.368-376
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• 2001

Performance of heat exchanger was evaluated to heat exchanger using oscillating heat pipe for waste heat recovery of low temperature. Oscillating heat pipe used in this study was formed to the closed loop of serpentine shapes using copper tubes. Heat exchanger was formed to shell and tube type and composed of low finned tube. R-22 and R-141b were used to the working fluids of tube side and their charging ratio was 40%. And, water was used to the working fluid of shell side. As the experimental parameters, the inlet temperature difference of heating and cooling part of secondary fluid and the mass velocity of secondary fluid were used. The mass velocity of secondary fluid was changed from 90 kg/$m^2s\; to\;190 kg/m^2$s from the experimental results, heat recovery rate was linearly increased to the increment of the mass velocity of secondary fluid and the inlet temperature difference of secondary fluid. Finally, the performance of heat exchanger was evaluated by using $\varepsilon$-NTU method. It was found that NTU was about 1.5 when effectiveness was decided to 80%.