Numerical investigation of geometrical arrangement effect of fuel cell cooling flow field on its performance

Seyed Majid Bigonah Ghlehsari¹ Abolfazl Jamali² Jafar Bazrafshan³

1) 1-School of Mechanical Engineering, Islamic Azad of Ayat Allah Amoli University, Amol, Iran
2) -2 Master of Aerospace, Malek Ashtar University of Technology, Tehran,
3) 3-Department of mechanical engineering, nour branch, Islamic azad university, nour, iran.3

Publication : 3rd International Congress On Engineering, Technology and Innovation(eticong.com/3rd)
Abstract :
Regarding substantial demand for clean and countable energy resources, fuel cells have attracted researchers’ attention all over the world. Therefore, extensive studies are conducted in this case. Because of the fuel cell’s operating temperature sensitivity, this study has focused on cooling flow field. Commercial software Fluent as a robust tool in Computational Fluid Dynamics has been implemented to well evaluate the problem governing idea by 3-dimensional simulations. 5 geometries of cooling flow field has been studied where schemes 1 and 2 are considered a combination of parallel and spiral patterns, schemes 3 and 4 are modeled in a totally parallel pattern and 5th scheme is a typical spiral field. Different heat fluxes and mass flow rates will be applied on mentioned geometries. Velocity contours have shown that fluid has high speed rate in short and low-pressure routes which must be directed properly to help dissipating heat from field’s middle points. Temperature contours in different heat fluxes have shown that scheme 1 has the highest temperature in some points of its surface which means that proper cooling has not been achieved. In scheme 2, suitable cooling has been conducted in the field but there is high temperature difference between middle and lateral points. As it is desirable to have both uniform temperature distribution and heat dissipation, schemes 3, 4 and spiral had better heat performance. In following, pressure contours for various mass flow rates attributed the most pressure loss to the spiral field and the least to the 3rd and 4th scheme. Based on the results, schemes 3 and 4 showed better performances comparing to other schemes in heat-fluid performance pespective.
Keywords : polymer fuel cell cooling field spiral parallel pressure los