Influence of cathode flow pulsation on performance of proton exchange membrane fuel cell with interdigitated gas distributors

In this paper, a numerical study is conducted in order to investigate the effect of pulsation of air flow at the cathode side of Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) fuel cell with interdigitated flow field. A two dimensional, isothermal, two-phase, unsteady multi-component transport model is used in order to simulate the transport phenomena. The obtained results are discussed in terms of the influence of flow pulsation on water management and cell performance. The results prove the effectiveness of flow pulsation on improving water removal from cell, enhancing reactants transports to the reaction sites, and increasing the cell performance expressed by increment in the cell limiting current density and maximum output power. The effects of pulsation frequency (f), amplitude (Amp), and mean inlet pressure (Pin) on the performance and the output power of the cell, are also investigated. The performance of the cell has no dependency on the frequency range considered in this study. However, as the pulsation amplitude increases the increment in the cell performance is more obvious. Moreover, applying flow pulsation at low flow rates leads to higher efficiency in water removal and performance enhancement.