Fang Yuan

Proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs), recognized as promising sources of waste heat for space heating, domestic hot water supply, and industrial thermal applications, have garnered substantial interest owing to their environmentally benign operation and high energy conversion efficiency. Since the uniformity of oxygen diffusion toward catalytic layers critically governs electrochemical performance, this study establishes a three-dimensional, non-isothermal computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model to systematically optimize the cathode flow channel width distribution, targeting the maximization of power output through enhanced reactant homogeneity. Numerical results reveal that non-uniform flow channel geometries markedly improve oxygen distribution uniformity, reducing the flow inhomogeneity coefficient by 6.6% while elevating maximum power density and limiting current density by 9.1% and 7.8%, respectively, compared to conventional equal-width designs. There were improvements attributed to the establishment of longitudinal oxygen concentration gradients and we alleviated mass transfer limitations. Synergistic integration with gas diffusion layer (GDL) gradient porosity optimization further amplifies performance, yielding a 12.4% enhancement in maximum power density and a 10.4% increase in limiting current density. These findings validate the algorithm’s efficacy in resolving coupled transport constraints and underscore the necessity of multi-component optimization for advancing PEMFC design.

This paper explores the mechanism of convective heat transfer enhancement in a new perspective. In this paper, a new parameter called heat convection velocity is proposed based on the field synergy principle. It is defined as the velocity projection on the temperature gradient vector and reflects the magnitude of the velocity component that contributes to heat convection. Three typical cases are taken into consideration to investigate the influence factors of Nusselt number theoretically. The results indicate that the Nusselt number can be enhanced by increasing the mean heat convection velocity and the dimensionless mean temperature difference. Through theoretical analysis, three suggestions are found for designing heat transfer enhancement components: (a) the overall synergetic effect should be improved; (b) the fluid with lower temperature gradient should be guided to the region where the temperature gradient is higher; (c) temperature distribution should be an interphase distribution of hot and cold fluid. Besides, the heat convection velocity is used to investigate the mechanism of convective heat transfer in the smooth tube. It is found that the increase of Nusselt number is due to the increase of heat convection velocity. In addition, according to design suggestions, a new insert is invented and inserted in the circular tube. With heat convection velocity analysis, it is found that there is much potential of increasing heat convection velocity for enhancing the convective heat transfer in the circular tube.

In this work, a shell and tube heat exchanger with inclined trefoil-hole baffles (STHX-IT) is proposed, and the numerical simulation is conducted to investigate the flow and heat transfer characteristics. A shell and tube heat exchanger with segmental baffles (STHX-SG) is also studied for the performance comparison. The results show that the heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop of the STHX-IT is averagely lower by 23.89% and 44.19% than those of the STHX-SG, but the heat transfer coefficient per pressure drop is higher by 36.38% on average. Further, the parametric studies of the inclination angle θ, trefoil-hole number n, and baffle cut δ are carried out for the STHX-IT. According to the numerical results, n and δ have more notable influence on shell side performance than θ. In detail, the heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop decrease slightly with θ increasing, and the overall performance is approximately equal; both the heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop decrease with the respective rising of n and δ, but the comprehensive performance shows a growing trend. Considering the synthetic effects of structural parameters, the multi-objective structure optimization using the genetic algorithm combined with the artificial neural networks is fulfilled. As a result, the Pareto front is obtained to characterize the behaviors of the maximum heat transfer rate and minimum pressure drop. The STHX-IT with the θ = 5.38°, n = 6, and δ = 43% is decided as the optimal solution by the TOPSIS method, whose Q/Δp is 2.34 times as much as that of the original STHX-SG.