Effect of cathode design on the performance of an air-breathing PEM fuel cell

Effect of cathode design on the performance of an air-breathing fuel cell is studied using a three dimensional, non-isothermal, steady state and single phase model developed using commercial CFD software FLUENT (version 6.3). Performances of ducted (channel) and ribbed (planar) cathode designs are compared and the cell characteristics such as current density, species, temperature distributions, velocity and net water transport coefficient are presented. Peak power density obtained for the cell with ducted cathode is 205 m W/cm2, whereas with ribbed cathode it is 232 m W/cm2. The limiting current density of the cell with ribbed cathode (690 m A/cm2) is much higher than that of the cell with ducted cathode (430 m A/cm2). The performance curves as well as the cell characteristics show that the ribbed cathode design is a better configuration compared to ducted design. Cell orientation has a significant effect on the cell performance. Best performance is obtained when the cell is oriented vertically for both ribbed and ducted cathode designs.