CFD Analysis of Flow Field and Stress Analysis of Cell Stack on PEM- Based Hydrogen Generator

The Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cell (PEFC) is becoming an interesting power source in various fields, from portable units to large stationary power systems. Such fuel cells require pure hydrogen and which can be provided by the electrolysis of water. PEM based Electrolyser has many advantages and provides fuel cell grade hydrogen. The scale up of flow field geometry from the lab scale single cell to bench scale stack gives performance losses due to fluid dynamic changes due to the scaling up. CFD analysis will be of helpful to prevent the reduction of performance in the stack. The performance of the cell also depends on the bipolar plate material and the compactness of the stack. Stress analysis using software may be useful to improve the performance of the stack. In the present work the effect of flow plate geometry, width, and thickness on the economical fabrication, utilization and fluid flow through the plate were studied. The effect of shape of the fluid flow channels on the performance of the electrolyzers and the pressure losses in the fluid flow channels were studied using CFD software. Titanium, Aluminum, Copper and Stainless Steel were considered as bipolar plates for the study. The dimension of the current lead plates with the above materials for 1Nm3/hr capacity Electrolyser is designed and the suitability of the materials was analyzed. Stress analysis for the Electrolyser with various current lead plates were carried out using Ansys software.