Fabrication of Porous Metal Fiber Sintered Sheet as a Flow Field for Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell

Abstract To improve the diffusion performance of reactive gas, a porous copper fiber sintered sheet (PCFSS) was fabricated and used as the flow field for proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). The pressure and flow velocity distribution of the reaction gas in the PCFSS was firstly compared with the serpentine flow field by using the Fluent simulation software. Our results showed that the superiority of PCFSS in the uniformity of gas diffusion was observed. The total resistance of PEMFC with PCFSS in different porosities was obtained. And the advantages of PCFSS in electronic transmission were proved by comparing with the serpentine flow field. Besides, the influences of different operating conditions and different porosities of porous flow fields on the performance of PEMFC were experimentally investigated. With the cell temperature of 70°C as well as the humidification temperature of 60°C, a PEMFC with PCFSS of 70% porosity exhibited better performance.