Effect of inhomogeneous compression of gas diffusion layer on the performance of PEMFC with interdigitated flow field

• A code is developed in FORTRAN to solve the fuel cell governing equations.
• Compression of GDL by 35% lead negligible performance loss in single-phase regions.
• The effects of this compression level were more obvious in two-phase regions.
• GDL compression increased flooding and decreased the electrochemical rate.
• Limiting current density and maximum output power decreased about 25% by 35% GDL compression.

In this paper, effects of inhomogeneous compression of GDL at the cathode side of proton-exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell with interdigitated flow field on water management and cell performance has been numerically investigated.A 2D, isothermal, two-phase and multi-component transport model has been used in order to simulate the transport phenomena. The model consists the gas diffusion layer and an ultra- thin layer as catalyst. The model results were in good agreement with the published data found in the literature. The results of this study prove the effects of considering GDL deformation on decreasing water removal from cell and also on decreasing reactants diffusion transports to the reaction sites, and thus dropping the cell performance as expressed by a drop in the cell limiting current density and maximum output power. Also, it has been proven that the compression level of 35% has no significant effects on the performance of the cell in single-phase regions, but effects of this level of compression are very considerable on the performance of the cell in the two-phase region. As a result, limiting current density and maximum out power of the cell were dropped by approximately 25%. Moreover, increasing the compression level from 10% to 35% led to an increase in the flooding of GDL and reactant transport was limited and performance loss increased (even in single-phase regions). At high compression level of 35%, the limiting current density and maximum output power had a very considerable drop of 25.1%, which indicates the importance of considering the effects of high clamping pressures in PEMFC modelling.