Experimental study on the performance of PEM fuel cells with interdigitated flow channels

In this work, the effects of interdigitated flow channel design on the cell performance of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) are investigated experimentally. To compare the effectiveness of the interdigitated flow field, the performance of the PEM fuel cells with traditional flow channel design is also tested. Besides, the effects of the flow area ratio and the baffle-blocked position of the interdigitated flow field are examined in details. The experimental results indicate that the cell performance can be enhanced with an increase in the inlet flow rate and cathode humidification temperature. Either with oxygen or air as the cathode fuel, the cells with interdigitated flow fields have better performance than conventional ones. With air as the cathode fuel, the measurements show that the interdigitated flow field results in a larger limiting current density, and the power output is about 1.4 times that with the conventional flow field. The results also show that the cell performance of the interdigitated flow field with flow area ratio of 40.23% or 50.75% is better than that with 66.75%. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V All rights reserved.