Abstract—This study presents an optimal combination of flow field channels, gas diffusion layers, and catalyst layers for proton exchange membrane fuel cell to achieve the highest electrochemical performance. A flow field plate with serpentine and straight channels machined is used to assemble in the reference unit cell for the study. In the beginning, a result of randomly chosen four MEAs from twenty-five samples is shown to distinguish the systematic patterns from random variation. Four combinations of different areas of flow field channels, gas diffusion layers, and catalyst layers are tested further, and discussed the issues of the performance affection. Under the test condition of providing hydrogen and oxygen, the performance of the optimal combination is 1.07 W/cm2, which is two times higher than that of the worst one (0.51 W/cm2).
Index Terms—Catalyst layer, flow field channel, gas diffusion layer, fuel cell.
C. Y. Liu and C. C. Sung are with the Department of Engineering Science and Ocean Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei 10617 Taiwan (e-mail: d99525002@ntu.edu.tw, ccsung@ntu.edu.tw).
L. H. Hu is with the Institute of Atomic and Molecular Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taipei 10617 Taiwan (e-mail: lunghao.hu@gmail.com).
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Cite:C. Y. Liu, L. H. Hu, and C. C. Sung, "Optimal Combination of Flow Field Channels, Gas Diffusion Layers, and Catalyst Layers for Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell," Journal of Clean Energy Technologies vol. 1, no. 4, pp. 260-263, 2013.
