This thesis presents a compendium of work related to performance analysesof a proton electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell with two novel designconfigurations. The finite element based numerical analysis has been carried out tosolve the numerical transport models involved in a PEM fuel cell coupled with theflow in a porous medium, charge balance, electrochemical kinetics and membranewater content. The scope of this research work focuses on improving theperformance of the PEM fuel cell by optimizing the thermo-fluid properties of thereactant species instead of analysing the complex electro-chemical interactions.Two new design configurations have been numerically analyzed; in the first designapproach, a perforated-type gas flow distributor is used instead of a conventionalgas flow distributor such as a serpentine, straight or spiral shape; the second designapproach examines the effect of reactant flow pulsation on the PEM fuel cellperformance. Results obtained from the numerical analyses were also comparedwith the experimental data and a good agreement was found.Performance of the PEM fuel cell with a perforated-type gas distributor wasanalyzed at different operating and geometric conditions to explore the merits ofthis new design configuration. Two-dimensional numerical analyses were carriedout to analyze the effect of varying the different operating parameters; threedimensionalnumerical analyses were carried out to study the variation of differentgeometric parameters on overall performance of the new design configuration of thePEM fuel cell.The effects of the reactant flow pulsation on the performance of PEM fuelcell were analyzed using a two-dimensional numerical approach where both activeand passive design configurations were numerically simulated to generate thepulsations in the reactant flow. The results showed a considerable increase inoverall performance of the PEM fuel cell by introducing pulsations in the flow.
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