The main purpose of this study is to investigate how a newly designed cooling fin affects the performance of open-cathode polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (OC-PEMFCs) at high current densities with the aid of experiments and simulation. The novel fin, denoted as the CASE-1 cooling fin, comprises a multi-hole structure (MHS) in the rib region. An OC-PEMFC stack with the CASE-1 cooling fins exhibits a higher performance under higher current densities than that with conventional cooling fins, which are referred to as CASE-2 cooling fins. Owing to several dead zones at the fan duct, sufficient air is not provided to the edges of the OC-PEMFC stack, where the 1st and 20th fuel cells are located; however, the MHS mitigates this decrease in the performance at the edge cells. Results of numerical simulation show that the oxygen mole fraction for CASE-1 cooling fins is higher than that for CASE-2 at the gas diffusion layer/membrane electrode assembly (GDL/MEA) interface indicating uniform oxygen distribution throughout the MEA area. These all results indicate that the CASE-1 cooling fin induces a positive oxygen distribution, resulting in a significant improvement in performance at higher current densities.

这项研究的主要目的是借助实验和仿真，研究新设计的散热片如何在高电流密度下影响开放式阴极聚合物电解质膜燃料电池（OC-PEMFC）的性能。新型散热片，称为CASE-1散热片，在肋骨区域包含一个多孔结构（MHS）。具有CASE-1散热片的OC-PEMFC堆叠在更高的电流密度下表现出比常规散热片（称为CASE-2散热片）更高的性能。由于风扇管道上有多个死区，因此未将足够的空气提供给OC-PEMFC电池堆的边缘（第1个和第20个燃料电池所在​​的位置）；但是，MHS缓解了边缘小区性能的下降。数值模拟结果表明，在气体扩散层/膜电极组件（GDL / MEA）界面处，CASE-1散热片的氧气摩尔分数高于CASE-2的氧气摩尔分数，表明整个MEA区​​域的氧气分布均匀。所有这些结果表明，CASE-1散热片感应出正的氧分布，从而在较高电流密度下显着改善了性能。