Analysis of Optimal Heat Transfer in a PEM Fuel Cell Cooling Plate

Abstract

Abstract An analysis of three‐dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is conducted to investigate the coupled cooling process involved in fluid flow and heat transfer between the solid plate and the coolant flow for optimization of the cooling design of a fuel cell stack. A conception of IUT (Index of Uniform Temperature) across the entire area is presented to evaluate the degree of uniform temperature profile across the cooling plates. Six cooling modes, including three serpentine‐type modes and another three parallel‐type modes, are presented and analyzed for optimization of the cooling mode of fuel cells. The prediction finds that the cooling effect of serpentine‐type cooling modes could be better than that of parallel‐type cooling modes.