Numerical investigation of a novel compound flow-field for PEMFC performance improvement

•Although many researchers use numerical approach for fuel cell investigation, many problems still need to be dealt with.•The novel compound flow field is focusing on flooding phenomena by enhancing the media momentum at the exit section.•This idea is so simple and applicable which helps to be used in experimental setups easily.

To investigate the effectiveness of a novel compound flow field design concerned in PEM fuel cell, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approach is employed. A novel compound flow field design along with typical serpentine and parallel designs is verified through three dimensional simulations. The numerical results for different reactant flow fields yield to observation of parameters like current density, membrane mass fraction of water and etc. Comparison of the results revealed that the way reactants are distributed on the surface is substantial. Driving the polarization curve for the three flow fields, it is seen that the parallel flow field demonstrated weaker performance in comparison to the other two models. The main reason is associated to insufficient distribution of the reactants. Analyzing the polarization curve of the compound design along with other contours it can be said that this design can be a good candidate for preventing the flooding phenomena while its performance is approximately the same as the serpentine type. So employment of the so-called design can be strongly recommended for high current density operating condition.