The influence of permeability changes for a 7-serpentine channel pem fuel cell performance

The performance of a fuel cell is determined by several parameters, which describe the fundamental, electrochemical and physical properties of the fuel cell layers, operational conditions, geometry/structure of the flow field. One of these parameters is the permeability of the porous layers. per presents results obtained for different cases in which we vary the permeability of the gas diffusion/catalyst layers of a 7-serpentine channel fuel cell. Simulations have been carried out for permeability’s values 10−9 to 10−12 (m2), in order to investigate the influence of this parameter on the water formation and transport. Taking into account some results related to: water mass fraction distributions at the interface between the anode/cathode and the membrane, water content, liquid water activity and current density, we obtained a range for the optimum permeability (10−12 to 10−10). The main goal was to obtain an optimum value of the permeability that will lead to a uniform distribution of reactant species and current density over the fuel cell active area.