www.tjprc.org editor@tjprc.org OPTIMIZATION OF DESIGN AND OPERATING PARAMETERS FOR ENHANCING THE PERFORMANCES OF PEMFC WITH SERPENTINE FLOW FIELDS VELMURUGAN PAVANAN 1 & LAKSHMINARAYANAN VARADHARAJAN 2 1 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Malla Reddy College of Engineering, Hyderabad, Telangana, India 2 Department of Mechanical Engineering, B V Raju Institute of Technology, Narsapur, Telangana, India ABSTRACT The performance of the Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) depends on various design and operating parameters. The present work is aimed to optimize the performance of 25cm 2 PEMFC, with respect to one design parameter (landing to channel width ratio- L: C) of serpentine flow field and two operating parameters (cell temperature & back pressure). Here, Taguchi technique and analysis of variance methodology have been used to obtain the optimum combination for the above three parameters. The experiments have been carried out with respect to Taguchi’s orthogonal array of L9 (33), for parametric analysis of PEMFC performance. Three factors and three levels, such as various landing width to channel width ratio (1:1, 1:2 and 2:2), cell temperature (40 o C, 50 o C and 60 o C) and back pressure (0, 0.5 and 1 bar) have been taken for optimization studies. Based on the experimental study conducted on serpentine flow field, the maximum power density of 0.263 W/cm 2 has obtained at 1 bar back pressure, 60°C cell temperature and L:C- 1:2. Among all the design and operating parameters, the major parameter that contributes to the performance of PEMFC is back pressure with 69.8 %. KEYWORDS: Analysis of Variance, Design and Operating Parameters, Serpentine, Taguchi Technique & Landing to Channel Width Ratio Received: Jul 16, 2017; Accepted: Aug 08, 2017; Published: Aug 22, 2017; Paper Id: IJMPERDAUG201745 INTRODUCTION The growing concerns on environmental issues have been constantly demanding cleaner and more energy efficient vehicles. In order to explore environment friendly alternatives, many automobile manufactures started focusing on Fuel cell powered vehicles [1]. Hence, the rapid rate of technical advances on the fuel cells, they will sooner become a viable alternative to internal combustion engine technology [2]. Fuel cells with its combination of ultra low emission and high efficiency attracts many of the fuel cell developers for rapidly commercializing this environment friendly technology [3]. It will be certainly the technology of choice of the future hydrogen economy, when our fossil fuel runs out. Efficiency of the PEMFC is governed by various geometrical parameters such as, flow field dimensions (like width, depth, length), landing to channel width ratios (L: C), cross-sectional structure of the flow channels, type of flow field design, number of cells and number of flow passes, and various operating parameters like cell temperature, operating pressure, back pressure, mass flow rate of species, stoichiometric ratio and humidity of reactants. Manso et al. [4] studied the performance of the PEMFC by examining various geometric parameters of the flow fields such as pins, straight and serpentine channels, integrated and interdigitated channels. Also, they have studied the influence of flow direction, channel length and number of channels, baffles usage in the flow Original Article International Journal of Mechanical and Production Engineering Research and Development (IJMPERD) ISSN (P): 2249-6890; ISSN (E): 2249-8001 Vol. 7, Issue 4, Aug 2017, 447-456 © TJPRC Pvt. Ltd.