Performance enhancement of air-cooled open cathode polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell with inserting metal foam in the cathode side

In this study, a novel way to improve performance of the air-cooled open cathode polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell is introduced. We suggest using a metal foam in the cathode side of the planar unit fuel cell for the solution to conventional problems of the open cathode fuel cell such as excessive water evaporation from the membrane and poor transportation of air. We conduct experiment and the maximum power density of the fuel cell with metal foam increases by 25.1% compared with the conventional fuel cell without metal foam. The open cathode fuel cell with metal foam has smaller ohmic losses and concentration losses. In addition, we prove that the open cathode fuel cell with metal foam prevents excessive water evaporation and membrane drying out phenomena with numerical approach. Finally, we apply the metal foam to the air-cooled open cathode fuel cell stack as well as the planar unit cell.