A study on using metal foam as coolant fluid distributor in the polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell

This paper deals with the usage of metal foams in coolant flow field of bipolar or cooling plates in PEMFC stack rather than conventional machined channel designs. A three-dimensional model is employed to simulate the fluid flow and heat transfer in cooling plates and the capabilities of four different coolant flow field designs, include one parallel, two serpentine and one metal foam porous media field, are investigated and compared based on the maximum surface temperature, uniformity of temperature and the pressure drop. The numerical results indicated that a model with the porous flow field made by metal foam is the best choice for reducing the surface temperature difference, maximum surface temperature and average surface temperature, among the studied models. Furthermore, due to its high permeable coefficient, the coolant pressure drop is very low in this model. Consequently, this model can be well-used as a coolant fluid distributor to improve the PEM fuel cell performance.