Flow field design mesh designs

Metal foams have been used in the past in the development of FF plates. However, Gamburzev and Appleby [53] used Ni foams as both a DL and a flow field plate with an MPL layer on one of its surfaces. They observed that such a design had high contact resistance between the nickel foam and the MPL and also increased gas diffusion resistance due to the required MPL thickness. Arisetty, Prasad, and Advani [54] were able to demonstrate that these materials can also be used as potential anode diffusion layers in DMFCs (see Figure 4.10). In fact, the nickel foam used in this study performed better than a carbon cloth (Avcarb 1071HCB) and a stainless steel mesh. However, it was recognized that a major drawback for these foams is their susceptibility to corrosion. 

The mathematical model for studying the hydro-dynamically developing flow-field and developing heat and mass transport phenomena is solved for different bipolar plate designs (Boddu and Majumdar, 2008). Figure 10.17 shows a three-dimensional model for simulation and a typical computational mesh size distribution in the feeder section of the channels. 

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