A numerical investigation on multi-phase transport phenomena in a proton exchange membrane fuel cell stack

In this study, the simulation of a fuel cell stack is performed by applying a general numerical model with VOF method that has been successfully applied to single PEMFC model to investigate the fluid dynamics, mass transport, flooding phenomenon and the effects of liquid water on the stack performance. The performance of three single cells in series connection in the fuel cell stack is examined according to the presence of liquid water in different single cells. The distributions of fluid flow, species concentration and the current density are presented to illustrate the effects of liquid water on the performance of each single cell. The numerical results locate that the low distributions of species in the flooding cell certainly degrade the performance of this cell. Moreover, it can be seen that the performance of the flooding cell will significantly affect the whole stack performance since the values of average current density must be identical in all single cells.