Numerical study to examine the performance of multi-pass serpentine flow-fields for cooling plates in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells

Temperature is an important factor that impacts the performance of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs). Proper cooling systems are indispensable for heat management. Cooling plates with coolant flow channels are mainly used to release the reaction heat in PEMFCs and thus control their operating temperature. In this study, several multi-pass serpentine flow-field (MPSFF) designs are studied in order to achieve better heat management by using cooling plates. Based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations of fluid flow and heat transfer in the cooling plates, the cooling performance of the six serpentine channel designs is evaluated. The results demonstrate that MPSFFs lead to better cooling performance compared with a conventional serpentine flow-field, in terms of both the maximum temperature and temperature uniformity. The effect of the Reynolds number and heat flux on the cooling performance exhibited by the six designs is also investigated.