Applied Thermal Engineering 31 (2011) 1427e1434

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Applied Thermal Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apthermeng

A numerical study on uniform cooling of large-scale PEMFCs with different

coolant ow eld designs
Seung Man Baek a, Seung Ho Yu b, Jin Hyun Nam c, Charn-Jung Kim a, *
a
School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Seoul National University, Seoul 151-742, Republic of Korea
b
Advanced Battery Center, Korea Institute of Science and Technology, Seoul 136-791, Republic of Korea
c
School of Automotive, Industrial, and Mechanical Engineering, Daegu University, Gyungsan 712-714, Republic of Korea

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: A uniform temperature distribution is important to obtain better control and higher performance of
Received 11 May 2010 polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs). In PEMFCs, more than half of the chemical energy of
Accepted 5 January 2011 hydrogen is converted into heat during the electrochemical generation of electricity. If not being properly
Available online 2 February 2011
exhausted, this reaction heat overheats the PEMFCs and thus impairs their performance and durability. In
general, large-scale PEMFCs are cooled by liquid water that circulates through coolant ow channels in
Keywords:
bipolar plates or in dedicated cooling plates. In this study, detailed uid ow and heat transfer in large-
Polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells
scale cooling plates with 18 cm
18 cm square area was simulated using a commercial computational
Cooling plate
Flow eld design
uid dynamics (CFD) code. Based on the CFD simulations, the performances of six different coolant ow
Temperature uniformity eld designs were assessed in terms of the maximum temperature, temperature uniformity, and pres-
Parallel Serpentine ow eld sure drop characteristics. The results demonstrated that multi-pass serpentine ow eld (MPSFF) designs
Multi-pass serpentine ow eld could signicantly improve the uniformity of temperature distribution in a cooling plate compared with
the conventional serpentine ow eld designs, while maintaining the coolant pressure drop similar.
2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction temperature of PEMFCs increases signicantly and also becomes

Cooling is an essential part in many processes and devices
related to the production and utilization of energy. Heat is gener-
ated due to innate irreversibilities of engineering processes and
thus should be properly managed. Otherwise, the process
temperature increases signicantly, adversely impacting their
performances. Polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs)
are the typical examples where cooling is important: Local hot
spots due to an improperly designed cooling system can accelerate
the mechanical damage of polymer electrolyte membranes,
impairing the reliability of PEMFCs.
During the electrochemical conversion of the chemical energy of
hydrogen into electricity, a considerable amount of reaction heat is
continuously generated inside of PEMFCs [1,2]. Considering the
thermal efciencies of about 4050%, more than half of the total
chemical energy of hydrogen is transformed into heat during the
operation of PEMFCs. In other words, the wasted heat in PEMFCs is
similar in magnitude or slightly larger than the generated electrical
power. Without proper management of the reaction heat, the
* Corresponding author. San 56-1 Shilim-dong, Gwanak-gu, Seoul 151-742,
Republic of Korea. Tel.: 82 2 880 656; fax: 82 2 883 0179.
E-mail address: kimcj@snu.ac.kr (C.-J. Kim).
non-uniform, resulting in degradation of their performance and
durability [3,4].
In general, a PEMFC stack is cooled by liquid water or air that
circulates through coolant ow channels in bipolar plates or in
dedicated cooling plates [5]. For liquid cooling of large-scale
PEMFCs, cooling plates inserted between several unit cells in the
stacks are generally used to exhaust the reaction heat by circulating
liquid water [6e8]. Thus, the primary role of cooling plates is to
prevent the overheating of PEMFCs by reducing the maximum
temperature. In addition, cooling plates should also provide more
uniform temperature distribution in PEMFCs by minimizing local
temperature variations. The uniform temperature with reduced
local hot spots leads to homogeneous electrochemical reaction, and
thus enables better performance, operational control, and better
durability of PEMFCs.
A simple way to achieve more uniform temperature distribution
in PEMFCs is to increase the ow rate of coolant (liquid water) that
circulates through a cooling plate. However, higher ow rate of
liquid coolant requires more pumping power, and thus can adversely
inuence the overall efciencies of PEMFCs due to parasitic power
consumption. As an alternative approach, several coolant ow eld
designs and channel modications have been proposed and tested
for better cooling performance of PEMFCs [9e13]. In line with these
studies, Nam et al. [14] have proposed the multi-pass serpentine

1359-4311/$ e see front matter 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2011.01.009
1428 S.M. Baek et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 31 (2011) 1427e1434

ow elds (MPSFFs) which are characterized by closely-interlaced
channels of different path-lengths from the inlet.
The design concept of MPSFFs was, in fact, inspired by the
convection enhanced serpentine ow eld (CESFF) proposed by Xu
and Zhao [15]. The closely interlaced channel structure in the CESFF
was experimentally demonstrated to enhance the performance of
direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs) and also enable more stable
operation. Regarding the cooling performance of MPSFFs, Yu et al.
[16] investigated the temperature distribution in a small-scale
cooling plate (6 cm
6 cm square area) with several single-path
MPSFFs using computational uid dynamics (CFD). The results in
Yu et al. [16] clearly demonstrated better performances of MPSFFs
as coolant ow eld designs, compared to those of the conventional
serpentine ow elds.
This study numerically investigated the performance of parallel
MPSFFs as coolant ow eld designs for a large-scale cooling plate
with 18 cm
18 cm square area. A commercial CFD code, STAR-CD
(CD-Adapco, Korea), was used to simulate the detailed uid ow
and heat transfer in the cooling plates employing different coolant
ow eld designs. The conventional serpentine and parallel ow
elds were also considered for comparison purposes. The cooling
performance of each coolant ow eld design was quantitatively
evaluated in terms of the maximum surface temperature, temper-
ature uniformity, and coolant pressure drop characteristics.
2. Theory and calculations
2.1. Geometric model
In general, a PEMFC is constructed by stacking many unit cells
repeatedly to obtain a proper level of output power as shown in Fig.1
(a). For example, more than 100 unit cells are serially stacked in an
automotive PEMFC to generated a rated power of about 80e100 kW.
A repeating unit cell in Fig. 1(a) consists of a membrane electrode
assembly (MEA) for the ion conduction and electrochemical
a
e
ur
reaction, two gas diffusion layers (GDLs) for the uniform reactant
diffusion, and two bipolar plates for the electron conduction and
ow distribution. Cooling is essential for the operation of a PEMFC
stack to exhaust the heat produced by electrochemical reactions.
This is generally done by liquid water that circulates through coolant
ow channels formed in bipolar plates or in dedicated cooling plates.
Fig. 1(a) shows a dedicated cooling plate inserted between several
unit cells to exhaust reaction heat from a PEMFC stack.
For the steady-state operation of a PEMFC, the average heat ux
at the surface of a dedicated cooling plate (two cooling surfaces), q,
is determined as [9,11]


nI  Dhof =2F  V
q (1)
2A
where n is the number of unit cells per cooling plate, I is the cell
current, V is the output cell voltage, A is the total cell area, Dhof is the
formation enthalpy of water (241.8 kJ/mol for LHV, 285.8 kJ/mol
for HHV), and F is the Faraday constant (96,487 C/mol). For the stack
structure shown in Fig. 1(a), the number of unit cells per cooling
plate, n, is one since a cooling plate is installed between every unit
cell. However, an n of about 3e5 is generally used in real practice
[9]. Note that the heat production rate in a PEMFC is similar or
slightly larger than its output power because the thermal efciency
is around 40e50%.
The grid structure used for the cooling plate simulations is
illustrated in Fig. 1(b), where the plate is discretized into either uid
cells for coolant channel regions or solid cells for bounding struc-
ture regions. Only half domain of a cooling plate was considered to
reduce the computational costs by taking advantage of symmetry.
Thus, as shown in Fig. 1(b), a symmetry condition was imposed on
the top boundary (the center-plane of the cooling plate) while
a constant heat ux condition was imposed on the bottom
boundary (the heat ux surface). The surface heat ux, q, was
prescribed to be 5000 W/m2 (0.5 W/cm2), which is a general value
encountered during the normal operation of PEMFCs.
In fact, the heat ux value of 0.5 W/cm2 was estimated by refer-
ring to the specication of a 1.2 kW Nexa PEMFC power module

(Ballard Power Systems Inc.). According to the user manual [17],

ct
ru

a Nexa power module dissipates about 1650 W of heat during its

St
k

operation at a rated power of 1.2 kW (net). Taking into account its

ac
St

total cell area of 4700 cm2 (47 stacks of unit cells with 100 cm2 active
Cooling Plate area), the heat dissipation rate in a unit cell of a Nexa power module
amounts to 0.35 W/cm2. For n 3 assumed in this study, the heat
nt Cathode Bipolar ux at the surface of a cooling plate becomes about 0.5 W/cm2.
o la Plate
Co ir MEA
However, it should be noted that a constant heat ux condition is
A difcult to be achieved at the surface of a cooling plate during the
Anode Bipolar actual operation of PEMFCs. Nevertheless, the results from these
Plate idealized simulations are believed to provide essential information
en Cooling Plate regarding the performance of cooling plates in real situations.
rog The coolant ow eld designs considered in this study are
yd t
H lan nt shown in Fig. 2. The models A and B are the conventional serpen-
o o la et tine ow elds with three and ve parallel paths, and the models
Co Fluid
Symmetry BC (Top) Cell Co utl C and D are the MPSFFs with three and ve parallel paths. In
b O
addition, a straight ow eld with 45 parallel paths (model E) and
a spiral ow eld with ve parallel paths (model F) were also
considered for comparison purpose. Note that the MPSFFs were
initially proposed as reactant ow elds to enhance the under-rib
t
let lan

convection in serpentine ow elds [14,15] but found to facilitate

In oo
C

Solid uniform cooling when used as coolant ow elds [16].

Cell
2.2. Governing equations
Heat Flux BC (Bottom)
Fig. 1. A PEMFC stack with inserted cooling plates: (a) stack structure, and (b) grid The detailed simulation of uid ow and heat transfer inside the
structure for cooling plate (half domain). cooling plates was conducted using a commercial CFD code, STAR-
 S.M. Baek et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 31 (2011) 1427e1434 1429

Fig. 2. Six coolant ow eld designs for a large-scale cooling plate with 18 cm
18 cm square area.

CD (CD-Adapco, Korea). This program solves the conservation transient terms in Eqs. (2)e(4) were not considered because this
equations for mass, momentum, and energy, based on the nite study focused only on the steady cooling performances. For solid
volume discretization method. For laminar, Newtonian, incom- regions, Eq. (4) was considered by setting uj 0 (pure conduction
pressible ow of liquid coolant through the cooling plate, the equation). The geometrical parameters and material properties
governing equations are expressed as used in the simulations are summarized in Table 1. The cooling
vuj plates were assumed to be made of graphite [18] and liquid water
0 (2) was assumed to ow through the plates.
vxj
A SIMPLE algorithm was adopted to treat the veloc-
! ! ityepressure coupling of the continuity equation, Eq. (2), and the
vui vu vp v vu
r uj i  m i (3) NaviereStokes equation, Eq. (3). The numerical solution was
vt vxj vxi vxj vxj considered to converge when the residual became smaller than
! ! 2
105 for the continuity and momentum equations and smaller
vT vT v vT than 1
109 for the energy equation. The operating and
rcp uj k (4) boundary conditions are also listed in Table 1, where the inlet
vt vxj vxj vxj
temperature, Tin, was xed at 40  C while the volume ow rate of
where r is the density, m is the kinetic viscosity, cp is the specic liquid water, Q, was varied as 6
106, 4
106, 2
106 m3/s
heat, and k is the thermal conductivity of the cooling uid. The (6, 4, 2 ml/s).
1430 S.M. Baek et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 31 (2011) 1427e1434

Table 1 temperature, Ts, along a straight channel (model E). From these
Parameters used for cooling plate simulations. data, the Darcy friction factor, f, was calculated as
Parameters Values
dp Dh
Plate geometries f (5)
Dimension, lp
wp
tp 180
180
2 mm3 dx ru2m =2
Channel and rib width, wch wrib 2 mm
Channel depth, tch 1 mm where Dh is the hydraulic diameter (1.33 mm in this study) and um
Hydraulic diameter, Dh 1.33 mm is the mean ow speed in the channel. Similarly, the Nusselt
Properties of plate (graphite) number, Nu, was calculated as
Density, rp 2250 kg/m3
Specic heat, cp,p 690 J/kg K dTm rcp um Ach Dh
Nu (6)
Thermal conductivity, kp 24.0 W/m K dx kPch Ts  Tm
Properties of coolant (water) at 40  C

Density, rw 992.2 kg/m3

where Ach is the cross-sectional area and Pch is the perimeter of the
Specic heat, cp,w 4179 J/kg K ow channel.
Thermal conductivity, kw 0.62 W/m K In Fig. 4(a), the simulated fRe is found to converge to 59.7 shortly
Viscosity, mw 0.000653 Pa s after the hydraulic entrance length of about 1 cm, which is in
Operating conditions relatively good agreement with the reference fRe value of 62 for
Heat ux, q 5000 W/m2 fully-developed laminar ow in a rectangular channel with an
Inlet uid temperature, Tw,in 40  C aspect ratio of two [19]. Also note that the hydraulic entrance
Inlet volume ux, Q 6
106, 4
106, 2
106 m3/s
Re number, Re rw uin Dh =mw 2026a
length, Le, is determined to be about 9 mm from Le =Dh z0:05Re
a
(Re 135 for the parallel straight ow eld at Q 6
106 m3/s). In
This is the maximum Reynolds number corresponding to the coolant ow eld
Fig. 4(b), the simulated Nu number is also observed to converge to
designs with three parallel paths (models A and C).
5.7 after the thermal entrance length of about 4 cm, which is
different from the reference Nu number of 4.12 for a constant heat
3. Results and discussions ux boundary. However, this discrepancy is believed to be caused
by the deviation of the thermal boundary condition at the channel
The grid dependency of numerical solution was tested rst to surface from the constant heat ux condition. Note that the thermal
ensure the accuracy of the simulation results for the six coolant entrance length, Le,t, is estimated to be about 4 cm from the
ow eld designs. In Fig. 3, the results from the grid dependency simulation, which is in good agreement with 39 mm determined
test conducted for a serpentine ow eld design (model A) are from Le;t =Dh z0:05
Re
Pr (Pr 4.3 for liquid water at 40  C).
presented. The tests inspected the dependency of the calculated Fig. 5 shows the simulated temperature distribution at the
pressure drop, Dp, and the maximum temperature, Tmax, on the center-plane of the 18 cm
18 cm cooling plate (symmetric
number of discretized volume cells. Fig. 3 indicates that Dp and Tmax boundary). The ow rate of liquid water, Q, was xed at
for model A become less dependent when the cell number exceeds 6
106 m3/s (6 ml/s) for the simulations. In Fig. 5, the evolution of
1,500,000. Thus, the optimal cell number for model A was chosen to water temperature along the ow channel and the temperature
be 1,505,700. For other ow eld designs, different cell numbers distribution in the solid plate region are well observed. In general,
were determined to be optimal, as summarized in Table 2. Note that water temperature increases along the ow channel by absorbing
more than 4,000,000 volume cells were used to accurately simulate the reaction heat (constant surface ux), and thus it is lowest near
the MPSFFs (models C and D). On the contrary, only about 800,000 the inlet and highest near the outlet of the coolant ow eld. Fig. 5
volume cells were used to simulate the parallel straight ow eld also shows the local water-plate temperature difference in the
(model E). This is because corner regions in serpentine ow elds cooling plates with different coolant ow eld designs.
require higher grid density due to complex ow structures while The role of cooling plates is to prevent overheating by properly
straight regions require low grid density. exhausting the reaction heat from PEMFCs and, at the same time, to
To validate the present CFD calculations, the Darcy friction maintain uniform temperature distribution throughout the active
factor, f, and the Nusselt number, Nu, were also checked for the area. Thus, what is more important is the temperature distribution
parallel straight ow eld (model E). Fig. 4 shows the evolution of at the surface of the cooling plate, shown in Fig. 6. It is clearly
water pressure, p, mean water temperature, Tm, and mean surface indicated in Fig. 6 that the parallel MPSFFs (models C and D) exhibit
better cooling performances compared to the conventional parallel
serpentine ow eld designs (models A and B) in terms of the
64
temperature uniformity. In Fig. 6, the parallel serpentine ow eld
Max. Temperature Tmax (C)

70 Pressure Drop designs (models A and B) and the parallel straight ow eld design
Pressure Drop p (kPa)

p 60 (model E) show the global temperature gradient starting from low

60 temperature near the inlets to high temperature near the outlets.

56
50
Table 2
Summary of the simulation results for six coolant ow eld designs at
40 Tmax 52 Q 6
106 m3/s.
Max. Temperature Flow Cell Tmax Tmin Tavg DT UT Dp
Optimal Range 48 eld number ( C) ( C) ( C) ( C) ( C) (Pa)
30
Model A 1,505,700 55.620 40.755 48.323 14.865 3.262 58,600
5 Model B 1,959,300 56.091 40.788 48.632 15.313 3.279 17,940
0 5 10 15 20 25 x 10
Model C 4,227,300 56.929 41.628 52.303 15.300 2.066 64,400
Cell Number Model D 4,227,300 57.613 41.567 51.690 16.046 1.810 17,900
Model E 825,300 56.532 41.363 49.964 15.169 3.437 135
Fig. 3. Results of the grid dependency test conducted for a coolant ow design
Model F 1,732,500 56.975 41.771 53.356 15.204 1.899 17,120
(model A).
 S.M. Baek et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 31 (2011) 1427e1434 1431

Pressure p ( Pa ) plate. Likewise, the temperature uniformity index, UT, quantita-

120 a 120 tively measures the deviation of the surface temperature, T, from
the average temperature, Tavg, at the heat transfer surface. In other
80 p f Re 59.7 80

f Re
words, UT becomes zero when the temperature distribution is
perfectly uniform.
40 40 The quantitative results for the cooling performances at
Le 1 cm Q 6
106 m3/s are summarized in Table 2. The maximum
0 0 surface temperature, Tmax, is around 55e57  C for all parallel ow
0 4 8 12 16 18
Pathlength x p (cm ) eld designs, which is because the outlet temperature of the
cooling uid is xed at 53  C due to energy balance in the cooling
60
Temperature T (C)

25
plates (corresponding to the coolant temperature rise of 13  C).
Le ,t 4 cm b 20 Similarly, the minimum surface temperature, Tmin, is about
55
Ts 15 40e41  C near the coolant inlet temperature of 40  C. In Table 2, the
range of surface temperature distribution, DThTmax  Tmin , for

Nu
50
Nu 5.7 10
Tm the parallel MPSFFs (models C and D) is slightly larger than those
45 5 for the conventional parallel serpentine ow elds (models A and B)
0
and the parallel straight ow eld (model E). However, the
40
0 4 8 12 16 18 temperature uniformity index, UT, for the parallel MPSFFs (models C
Pathlength x p (cm ) and D) is about 1.8e2.1  C, which corresponds to only about 60% of
UT for the conventional parallel serpentine ow elds (models A and
Fig. 4. Evolution of dimensionless numbers along the channel of the parallel straight B) and the parallel straight ow eld (model E). The parallel spiral
ow eld (model E) at Q 6
106 m3/s: (a) Darcy friction factor, f, and (b) Nusselt
ow eld design (model F) exhibits the second lowest UT, but its
number, Nu.
average surface temperature, Tavg, is highest among the ow eld
The parallel spiral ow eld design (model F) shows rather uniform designs considered in this study.
temperature distribution, but the average surface temperature is Fig. 7 shows the simulated effect of coolant ow rate, Q, on the
also higher than the other ow eld designs. temperature uniformity indices, DT and UT. It is clearly shown in
For more quantitative comparison of the cooling performances, Fig. 7 that DT and UT are inversely proportional to Q, which indicates
the uniformity index, UT, was dened as [9,11] that higher ow rate facilitates more uniform temperature distri-
bution. In Fig. 7, the surface temperature difference, DT, becomes
Z Z
relatively similar irrespective of ow eld designs when Q becomes
jT  Tavg jdA T dA sufciently large, e.g., 6
106 m3/s. Fig. 7 clearly shows that the
UT A
Z and Tavg A
Z (7) parallel MPSFFs (models C and D) exhibit the smallest UT, indicating
dA dA their superior cooling performance. At all values of Q considered in
this study, the uniformity index, UT, for the parallel MPSFFs (models
A A
C and D) maintains about 60% of UT for the conventional parallel
where A is the surface area. Note that the integration in Eq. (7) is serpentine ow elds (models A and B) and the parallel straight
done only for the surface area at the constant heat ux boundary. ow eld (model E). The parallel spiral ow eld design (model F)
Thus, Tavg denotes the average surface temperature of the cooling has a uniformity index similar to the parallel MPSFFs.

Fig. 5. Center-plane temperature distribution in cooling plates with six coolant ow eld designs at Q 6
106 m3/s.
1432 S.M. Baek et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 31 (2011) 1427e1434

Fig. 6. Surface temperature distribution in cooling plates with six coolant ow eld designs at Q 6
106 m3/s.

The pressure drop, Dp, across the coolant ow eld designs are
compared in Fig. 8. The quantitative values for Dp at
Q 6
106 m3/s are also provided in Table 2. It is found in Fig. 8
that the pressure drop, Dp, is closely related to the number of
parallel paths in the ow elds. That is, the ow eld designs with
three parallel paths (models A and C) exhibit similarly higher Dp
(around 60,000 Pa at Q 6
106 m3/s), while the ow eld
designs with ve parallel paths (models B, D, and F) exhibit simi-
larly lower Dp (around 18,000 Pa at Q 6
106 m3/s). As expec-
ted, the parallel straight ow eld design (model E) has Dp of only
about 135 Pa at Q 6
106 m3/s due to the large number of
parallel paths (45 parallel paths). This trend is easily understood by
the fact that both the uid velocity and the channel length are
inversely proportional to the number of parallel paths when the
coolant ow rate is xed. In addition, Fig. 8 indicates that the Dp
across each coolant ow eld design is rather proportional to the
volume ow rate, Q, but shows a slight nonlinearity as Q increases.
This slight nonlinearity of Dp with respect to Q is believed to be
caused by the secondary pressure losses in many curved regions of
the coolant ow elds.
Better temperature uniformity for the parallel MPSFFs (models C
and D) is believed to be caused by the closely-interlaced structure
of ow channels having different path-lengths measured from the
inlet. However, this interlaced ow structure is also found to
 S.M. Baek et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 31 (2011) 1427e1434 1433

Fig. 7. Cooling performances of six coolant ow eld designs: (a) surface temperature
difference, DT, and (b) temperature uniformity indices, UT.

increase the maximum coolant temperature and thus the

maximum surface temperature as seen in Table 2. It is shown in
Fig. 5 that a lower parallel path tends to have a higher coolant
temperature than its upper parallel path due to energy transfer
from the upper path to the lower. Thus, further improvement of the
temperature uniformity and the reduction of the maximum surface
temperature can be achieved by varying the coolant ow rate at
each parallel path of the parallel MPSFFs. Fig. 9 shows the surface
temperature distribution in the cooling plate with the ve-path
parallel MPSFF design (model D). The coolant ow rate of
Q 6
106 m3/s was non-uniformly distributed among ve
parallel paths as 16% of Q for the uppermost path, 24% for the
lowermost path, and 20% for the other paths. Fig. 9 clearly indicates
that non-uniform ow rate distribution among parallel paths of the
MPSFF (model D) can signicantly improve the uniformity of
70
Model A
60
Pressure Drop p (kPa)
Fig. 9. Surface temperature distribution in the cooling plate with the ve-path parallel
MPSFF design (model D) at Q 6
106 m3/s: (a) uniform ow rate distribution and
(b) non-uniform ow rate distribution among ve parallel paths.
surface temperature, by reducing UT from 1.810  C for uniform ow
rate case to 1.391  C. In addition, the overheating can be also
relived, as indicated by the decreased in Tmax from 57.613  C for
uniform ow rate case to 55.579  C for non-uniform ow rate case.
The simplest way to achieve different ow rates among parallel
paths is to modify the cross-sectional area of ow channels.
4. Conclusion
Numerical simulations were conducted to investigate the cool-
ing performance of a large-scale cooling plate with 18 cm
18 cm
square area. Six different parallel ow elds were tested in search
of better coolant ow eld designs for efcient and uniform cooling
of PEMFCs. The results showed that the parallel MPSFFs (models C
and D) had better cooling performances than the conventional

B
50 C parallel serpentine ow elds (models A and B), while the pressure
D drop characteristics were rather similar when the number of
40 E parallel paths maintained equal. The parallel straight ow eld
F
(model E) showed the smallest pressure drop but, at the same time,
30
the most non-uniform temperature distribution as expected.
20 In summary, the parallel MPSFFs (models C and D) were found
to be most effective coolant ow eld designs for maintaining more
10 uniform temperature throughout the active area. In addition, the
parallel MPSFFs were found to have the possibility of further
0
2 10
6
4 10
6
6 10
6 improving the temperature uniformity in PEMFCs (and also
Volume Flow Rate Q (m /s ) 3 relieving the overheating) when the coolant ow rate at each
parallel path is properly controlled. Considering the parasitic power
Fig. 8. Pressure drop characteristics of six coolant ow eld designs. required for pumping liquid coolant, the MPSFF with ve parallel
1434 S.M. Baek et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 31 (2011) 1427e1434

paths (model D) was the best coolant ow eld design among [11] J. Choi, Y.H. Kim, Y. Lee, K.J. Lee, Y. Kim, Numerical analysis on the perfor-
mance of cooling plates in a PEFC, Journal of Mechanical Science and Tech-
considered in this study. The results of this study can be a useful
nology 22 (2008) 1417e1425.
guideline in designing the cooling systems for large-scale PEMFCs, [12] S.M. Perng, H.W. Wu, Heat transfer in a PEMFC ow channel, Applied Thermal
and also for other engineering devices and processes where Engineering 29 (2009) 3579e3594.
uniform cooling is essential. [13] K.H. Cho, J. Lee, M.H. Kim, A. Bejan, Vascular design of constructal structures
with low ow resistance and nonuniformity, International Journal of Thermal
Sciences 49 (2010) 2309e2318.
[14] J.H. Nam, K.J. Lee, S. Sohn, C.J. Kim, Multi-pass serpentine ow-elds to
Acknowledgement enhance under-rib convection in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells:
Design and geometrical characterization, Journal of Power Sources 188 (2009)
This work was supported by the second stage of the Brain Korea 14e23.
[15] C. Xu, T.S. Zhao, A new ow eld design for polymer electrolyte-based fuel
21 (BK21) Project in 2010, and also by the National Research
cells, Electrochemistry Communications 9 (2007) 497e503.
Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education, [16] S.H. Yu, S. Sohn, J.H. Nam, C.J. Kim, A numerical study to examine the
Science and Technology (2010-0012613). performance of multi-pass serpentine ow elds for cooling plates in polymer
electrolyte membrane fuel cells, Journal of Power Sources 194 (2009)
697e703.
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