Design of a novel multizone cooling system for performance improvement in proton exchange membrane fuel cell

Thermal management is critical to developing proton exchange membrane fuel cell systems, impacting their output performance, safety, and lifetime. Currently, studies on thermal management use single zone cooling technique to control the cell temperature, which leads to the non-uniform distribution of water inside the cell and reduces the cell's output performance and life span. In this paper, a novel multizone cooling system is developed to optimise the thermal management of the cell, and the effect of multizone cooling technology on the cell is investigated under different operating parameters. The experimental results demonstrate that cell voltage and current density uniformity improved when the cell bottom temperature was high and the inlet temperature was low. The performance enhancement was significant as the back pressure and outlet temperature increased. Notably, the cell with multizone temperature control showed significantly reduced reverse current generation and improved current density uniformity. Compared to cells using single zone cooling technique at 60 °C, the voltage increased by 9.98 %, 12.07 %, and 15.98 % at current densities of 400, 800, and 1200 mA cm⁻², respectively. Multizone cooling technology notably enhances current density uniformity, achieving a 40.93 % improvement at 400 mA cm⁻².