TY - GEN
T1 - NEW CONCEPTUAL GAS DISTRIBUTOR WITH MASS TRANSFER ENHANCING FUNCTION IN POLYMER ELECTROLYTE FUEL CELLS
AU - Li, P. W.
AU - Chen, S. P.
AU - Chyu, M. K.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2004 by ASME.
PY - 2004
Y1 - 2004
N2 - A new conceptual structure of the gas distributors in polymer electrolyte fuel cells (PEFC) or proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells is developed in this work. Basically, instead of partitioned channels and noninterrupted walls, the proposed new gas distributors make use of discretized elements as the current collector in the flow fields, which can help to enhance the mass transfer in the gas flow fields while maintaining the function of transmitting current out of the fuel cell. Experimental operation without external humidification of the reactant gases for single PEM fuel cells and cell stacks using conventional and the currently presented gas distributors were conducted for comparison and verification. It was found that the maximum operational cell current, beyond which there is a sharp drop of the cell voltage, could be significantly improved when using the currently proposed gas distributors and the same membrane-electrode-assembly (MEA) sheets. Correspondingly, the output electrical power can have at least 11 percent increment for the operation with free-convective airflow and around 50 percent increment for the operation with forced convective airflow.
AB - A new conceptual structure of the gas distributors in polymer electrolyte fuel cells (PEFC) or proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells is developed in this work. Basically, instead of partitioned channels and noninterrupted walls, the proposed new gas distributors make use of discretized elements as the current collector in the flow fields, which can help to enhance the mass transfer in the gas flow fields while maintaining the function of transmitting current out of the fuel cell. Experimental operation without external humidification of the reactant gases for single PEM fuel cells and cell stacks using conventional and the currently presented gas distributors were conducted for comparison and verification. It was found that the maximum operational cell current, beyond which there is a sharp drop of the cell voltage, could be significantly improved when using the currently proposed gas distributors and the same membrane-electrode-assembly (MEA) sheets. Correspondingly, the output electrical power can have at least 11 percent increment for the operation with free-convective airflow and around 50 percent increment for the operation with forced convective airflow.
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U2 - 10.1115/FUELCELL2004-2521
DO - 10.1115/FUELCELL2004-2521
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:4344663843
T3 - ASME 2004 2nd International Conference on Fuel Cell Science, Engineering and Technology, FUELCELL 2004
SP - 561
EP - 565
BT - ASME 2004 2nd International Conference on Fuel Cell Science, Engineering and Technology, FUELCELL 2004
PB - American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)
T2 - ASME 2004 2nd International Conference on Fuel Cell Science, Engineering and Technology, FUELCELL 2004
Y2 - 14 June 2004 through 16 June 2004
ER -