A flow channel design procedure for PEM fuel cells with effective water removal

Proper water management in polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells is critical to achieve the potential of PEM fuel cells. Membrane electrolyte requires full hydration in order to function as proton conductor, often achieved by fully humidifying the anode and cathode reactant gas streams. On the other hand, water is also produced in the cell due to electrochemical reaction. The combined effect is that liquid water forms in the cell structure and water flooding deteriorates the cell performance significantly. In the present study, a design procedure has been developed for flow channels on bipolar plates that can effectively remove water from the PEM fuel cells. The main design philosophy is based on the determination of an appropriate pressure drop along the flow channel so that all the liquid water in the cell is evaporated and removed from, or carried out of, the cell by the gas stream in the flow channel. At the same time, the gas stream in the flow channel is maintained fully saturated in order to prevent membrane electrolyte dehydration. Sample flow channels have been designed, manufactured and tested for five different cell sizes of 50, 100, 200, 300 and 441 cm². Similar cell performance has been measured for these five significantly different cell sizes, indicating that scaling of the PEM fuel cells is possible if liquid water flooding or membrane dehydration can be avoided during the cell operation. It is observed that no liquid water flows out of the cell at the anode and cathode channel exits for the present designed cells during the performance tests, and virtually no liquid water content in the cell structure has been measured by the neutron imaging technique. These measurements indicate that the present design procedure can provide flow channels that can effectively remove water in the PEM fuel cell structure.