Transactions of FAMENA, Vol. 43 No. 2, 2019.
Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.21278/TOF.43205
Interdigitated Flow Channel on a Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell Investigated Using the Response Surface Methodology
Lakshminarayanan Varadha Rajan
; Department of Mechanical Engineering, KGISL Institute of Technology, KG Campus, Saravanampatti, Coimbatore, Tamilnadu, India
Velmurugan Pavanan
; Department of Mechanical Engineering, Malla Reddy College of Engineering, Hyderabad, Telangana, India
Karthikeyan Palaniswamy
; Department of Automobile Engineering, PSG College of Technology, Peelamedu, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India
Abstract
Performance of the proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell depends on the operating pressure, operating temperature, stoichiometric ratio of reactant gases, relative humidity, and rib width-to-channel width ratio (R:C), shape of the flow channel, and the number of passes on the flow channel. The effect of pressure, temperature, inlet reactant mass flow rate and rib width-to-channel width ratios of 1:1, 1:2, 2:1, and 2:2 on the power density of a PEM fuel cell with interdigitated flow channel of 25 cm^2 active area of was considered in this study. The response surface methodology was used for optimizing the four above mentioned parameters to find the optimum power density of the PEM fuel cell. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to find the contribution of each parameter to the performance of the PEM fuel cell. Further, numerical results were compared with the experimental validation of the PEM fuel cell. Numerical results of power densities of interdigitated flow channel with R:C ratios of 1:1, 1:2, 2:1, and 2:2 were found to be 0.272, 0.292, 0.267, and 0.281 W/cm^2 and the corresponding experimental results of power density were 0.261, 0.266, 0.254, and 0.264 W/cm^2, respectively.
Keywords
Optimization; PEM fuel cell; response surface methodology; computational fluid dynamics; interdigitated flow channel; rib width-to-channel width ratio
Hrčak ID:
223166
URI
Publication date:
22.7.2019.
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