Numerical studies on porous water transport plates applied in PEMFCs under pure oxygen condition

Flooding is the main challenge for oxygen supply PEMFCs under low stoichiometry applied in enclosed environment. Water transport plates (WTPs) can utilize the differential pressure between cathode and coolant chamber to achieve passive water management without additional parasite power. Considering the lack of prior models for WTPs applied in PEMFCs under pure oxygen condition, this work presents a steady 3D model and numerically investigate the effects of operational parameters on cell performance and other parameters distribution. The results indicate that the application of WTP and larger differential pressure improve cell performance. Moreover, higher coolant temperature weakens cell performance mainly due to membrane dehydration. Finally, four different WTP settings under low RH condition are studied to investigate the humidification function of WTPs, and WTP-Plate-AC shows the best performance.