Effect of adding vortex promoter on the performance improvement of active air-cooled proton exchange membrane fuel cells

A novel method based on the Karman vortex street phenomenon for optimising air-cooled fuel cell cooling is pioneered in this paper. A vortex promoter is added to the fuel cell air inlet to create a cylindrical spoiler column before each cathode channel inlet to enhance the cooling effect and temperature distribution uniformity of the fuel cell stack. A single-channel air-cooled fuel cell model is established to validate the effect of a spoiler column and study the effect of its parameters on the cooling effect. The simulation results clearly demonstrate that the spoiler column can increase the turbulent intensity of the airflow in the cathode channel; thus, the airflow removes more heat from the fuel cell, leading to a greater cooling effect. The vortex promoter in this simulation can improve the cooling effect of fuel cell by 0.15% and the energy conversion efficiency by 0.91%. Furthermore, moderately reducing the diameter of the spoiler column and the distance between the spoiler column and the cathode inlet further increases the heat removed by the airflow, verifying the feasibility of optimising the temperature distribution uniformity of fuel cell stacks by adding spoiler columns with different parameters in different areas of the fuel cells. ? 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

A novel method based on the Karman vortex street phenomenon is proposed in this paper for optimizing air-cooled fuel cell cooling, which involves adding a vortex promoter to enhance cooling effect. The simulation results show that the vortex promoter can improve the cooling effect and energy conversion efficiency of the fuel cell, validating the feasibility of optimizing temperature distribution uniformity with different parameters.