boucetta, abir university of mohamed khider biskra - department of electrical engineering, mse laboratory, Biskra, Algeria , bahri, mebarek university of mohamed khider biskra - department of electrical engineering, mse laboratory, Biskra, Algeria , ghodbane, hatem university of mohamed khider biskra - department of electrical engineering, mse laboratory, Biskra, Algeria

COMPUTATIONAL INVESTIGATION OF THE EFFECT OF THE INLET PRESSURE AND THE POROSITY OF GAS DIFFUSION LAYER ON THE PEM FUEL CELL PERFORMANCE

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A proton exchange membrane fuel cell is an electrochemical device that can convert chemical energy directly into electric energy. The focus of this paper is to propose a three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics model of a straight single channel PEM fuel cell, including the effects of inlet pressure and diffusion layer porosity on the performance of fuel cell. The gas flow is supposed to be laminar, transient, non-isothermal and incompressible. The equations of conservation of mass, momentum and species are presented and the simulation is, carried out using the finite volume method tool of ANSYS FLUENT software based on a computational technique specific to fluid dynamics. The experimental results of the polarisation curves show how the performance of the PEM fuel cell varies under the effects of the considered operating parameters that are inlet pressure and gas diffusion layer porosity. Compared to the experimental and modelling results published in the literature, this work gives a good qualitative agreement.

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PEM fuel cell , inlet pressure , porosity , Fuel cell performance , CFD , 3D model

Courrier Du Savoir

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