Infrared Thermography and Numerical Modeling as Tools for Bipolar Plate Cooling Flow Field Design

摘要

Many power applications employ a coolant loop and radiator to exhaust excess heat to the surroundings. In a proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) stack, effective cell cooling is generally achieved by circulating coolant through coolant flow fields (CFFs) in the bipolar plates (BPPs) between individual cells to maintain a uniform temperature distribution across the stack [1]. Recently, metal is becoming the material of choice in PEMFC BPPs because of advantages in cost, weight, sealing and ruggedness over other BPP materials like carbon. Titanium alloy was examined in this work because it has a low thermal conductivity compared to other BPP materials (95 W K~(-1) m~(-1) for Poco carbon vs. 16.3 W K~(-1) m~(-1) for 316L stainless steel vs. 6.7 W K~(-1) m~(-1) for Ti-6A1-4V titanium alloy) and it is an important material for aerospace applications because of its high strength-to-weight ratio.