Numerical modeling and optimization of pressure drop and heat transfer rate in a polymer fuel cell parallel cooling channel

Conventional parallel cooling channels introduce some challenges that would reduce cooling channel performance. So, presenting novel ideas is to improve the cooling channel performance and determine which parameters play a vital role in this flow field. In this study, the thermal performance of a conventional polymer fuel cell (PEM) parallel cooling channel is investigated numerically by computational fluid dynamics and optimized by the Taguchi method. The study focuses on aluminum oxide in a distilled water/ethylene glycol (W/EG) mixture with a nanoparticles-volume concentration as the coolant in a fuel cell cooling channel. Since both thermal and hydraulic points of view are essential in cooling engineering, heat transfer and pressure drop were considered. For this reason, the Nusselt number was considered to evaluate convection heat transfer, and pressure drop was estimated to weigh flow behavior through the cooling channel. According to the results, heat transfer and pressure drop have augmented by about 20–78.1% as the fluid velocity picks up in the channel. Increasing the share of EG is another measure to improve the rates of heat transfer and pressure drop for 41.7% and 71%, respectively. As expected, the results will approve that a higher concentration of Al₂O₃ NPs enhances the pressure drop and heat transfer rate by about 92.59 and 6.75%, respectively. In addition, the Reynolds number and nanoparticle percentage were found as the most effective parameters for both heat transfer rate and pressure drop.