Improved performance of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell using leaf-baffle flow field design

The hydrogen fuel cell is an environmentally friendly alternative energy converter. Its performance is quite influenced by the geometry of the flow field. This study proposes a leaf-baffle flow field design with experimental testing compared to conventional models. Experiments were carried out on a single cell Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell with an active area of 25 cm2, with flow field design variations of parallel, leaf, and leaf-baffle on the cathode. The performance of each design is compared with the polarisation and power density graphs, the pressure drop due to energy loss is also compared. The results showed that the leaf-baffle design produces the best performance, increased by 37.14% compared to parallels. Furthermore, to obtain better performance, the ratio of the reactants velocity to the branch length needs to be considered for designing the flow field.