The effect of baffle shape on the performance of a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell with a biometric flow field

Flow field design on the cathode side, inspired by leaf shapes, leads to a high performance, as it achieves a good distribution of reactants. Furthermore, the addition of baffles to the cathode channel also increases the supply of reactants in the cathode catalyst. However, research on the addition of baffles to the cathode channel has still been limited to straight channels and conventional flow fields. Therefore, in this work, a numerical study was conducted to investigate the effect of baffles on the leaf flow field on the performance of a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell. The generated 3D model is composed of nine layers with a 25-cm² active area. The beam and chevron shapes of the baffles, which were inserted into the mother channel, were compared. The simulation results revealed that the addition of beam-shaped baffles that are close to each other can increase the current and power densities by up to 18% due to the more uniform distribution of the oxygen mass fraction.