A Study on the Flow of Air and Water Vapor in the Fuel Cells

In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in finding alternative energy sources.Among the possibilities currently being explored are hydrogen fuel cells, which produce electrical energy from hydrogen and oxygen gas.Hydrogen fuel cells have already been proven useful in applications ranging from automobiles to space exploration.However, hydrogen fuel cells are currently hindered by water management issues.While water management is crucial throughout the entire cell, the current research intends to examine the two-phase exiting flow of air and water vapor occurring in the gas diffusion layers.In addition, a possible non-wetting scenario has also been investigated.To further the understanding of hydrogen fuel cells, a wind channel was constructed with a variable fan speed and channel height.This apparatus allowed experimenters to observe the two-phase flow of air and water vapor that occurs in the gas diffusion layers of the fuel cells.Experiments were conducted to aid in the correlation of the resulting air speed due to the influence of channel height and fan speed.Because of the difficulty in experimentally finding the air velocity, a correlation between the channel height, fan velocity, and air speed was needed.By using analysis of variance, residuals, and regression an equation for predicting the air velocity was found with a 95% confidence interval.The data were found to be normally distributed with the exception of one outlier.The accuracy of the model increased when both the channel height and fan speed were used as regressor variables.