The Design and Performance Study of Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Using 3-D Mesh

The production of hydrogen and oxygen using the water electrolysis technology is mostly influenced by the performance and efficiency of the components that are used in the production systems. In this study, the flow field’s channels of the bipolar plates of polymer electrolyte membrane electrolyzer were replaced by 3-D titanium mesh, and the polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) electrolyzer cell that uses 3-D titanium mesh was designed. A numerical analysis was conducted to study the performance of the designed model. By comparing the results with the electrochemical performance of PEM electrolyzer cell with flow field channels on the plates, it was found that the cell with 3-D titanium mesh has greater performance and higher total power dissipation density. Therefore, the use of 3-D mesh can be used instead of machining the flow field channels on the bipolar plates.