Numerical thermal analysis of nanofluid flow through the cooling channels of a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell filled with metal foam

Improvement in the cooling system performance by making the temperature distribution uniform is an essential part in design of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells. In this paper, we proposed to use water-CuO nanofluid as the coolant fluid and to fill the flow field in the cooling plates of the fuel cell stack by metal foam. We numerically investigated the effect of using nanofluid at different porosities, pore sizes, and thicknesses of metal foam, on the thermal performance of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell. The accuracy of present computations is increased by applying a three-dimensional modeling based on finite-volume method, a variable thermal heat flux as the thermal boundary condition, and a two-phase approach to obtain the distribution of nanoparticles volume fraction. The obtained results indicated that at low Reynolds numbers, the role of nanoparticles in improvement of temperature uniformity is more dominant. Moreover, metal foam can reduce the maximum temperature for about 16.5 K and make the temperature distribution uniform in the cooling channel, whereas increase in the pressure drop is not considerable.     

Numerical investigation of pressure drop characteristics of gas channels and U and Z type manifolds of a PEM fuel cell stack

Fluid flow manifold plays a significant role in the performance of a fuel cell stack because it affects the pressure drop, reactants distribution uniformity and flow losses, significantly. In this study, the flow distribution and the pressure drop in the gas channels including the inlet and outlet manifolds, with U- and Z-type arrangements, of a 10-cell PEM fuel cell stack are analyzed at anode and cathode sides and the effects of inlet reactant stoichiometry and manifold hydraulic diameter on the pressure drop are investigated. Furthermore, the effect of relative humidity of oxidants on the pressure drop of cathode are investigated. The results indicate that increase of the manifold hydraulic diameter leads to decrease of the pressure drop and a more uniform flow distribution at the cathode side when air is used as oxidant while utilization of humidified oxidant results in increase of pressure drop. It is demonstrated that for the inlet stoichiometry of 2 and U type manifold arrangement when the relative humidity increases from 25% to 75%, the pressure drop increases by 60.12% and 116.14% for oxygen and air, respectively. It is concluded that there is not a significant difference in pressure drop of U- and Z-type arrangements when oxygen is used as oxidant. When air is used as oxidant, the effect of manifold type arrangement is more significant than other cases, and increase of the stoichiometry ratio from 1.25 to 2.5 leads to increase of pressure drop by 527.3%.     

A method for the concurrent design and analysis of networked manufacturing systems

Multistage manufacturing processes (MMPs) require multiple stations and operations. Traditionally, analysis of MMPs focused on material planning and control strategies. For a given MMP, the effect of the strategy on the volume and rate of production, ability to handle product type variability, and the effects of process variability on production rate, on-process inventory, etc., have been studied individually. Such approaches, while necessary, do not address the combined effects of MMP design choices on the final product quality. In this article, a method based on the compromise decision support problem and stream of variation model is proposed to provide a way to evaluate suitable designs for the implementation of MMPs. Using the dimensional quality of the product as a measure of quality, the proposed method is illustrated using a three-stage MMP in an automobile panel stamping process while considering the conflicting requirements of diagnosability and controllability.     

Heterogeneous Catalytic Polymerization of Ethylene in Microtubular Reactor Systems

The feasibility of using a microtubular reactor for heterogeneous polymerization of ethylene was investigated experimentally. Chemically inert polymer tubing of 800–2300 μm in inner diameter was fabricated and used as a polymerization reactor. Nonporous silica nanoparticles with a diameter of 400 nm were synthesized and used as support for the high‐activity rac‐ethylene(indenyl)₂ZrCl₂ catalyst with methylaluminoxane as cocatalyst and toluene as diluent. Large‐diameter microtubular reactors were also successfully used to conduct heterogeneous polymerization of ethylene in continuous reaction operations. High initial catalyst activity was obtained and the overall polymerization activity per volume or reactor length was quite high. No particle fragmentation occurred and the polymer particles were covered with small subgrains or nanofibrils with a diameter of 30 nm.     

Engineering geological properties of the pyroclastic cone-shaped rocky houses of Kandovan,Iran

Bulletin of Engineering Geology and the Environment - Kandovan is one of the geo-tourism attractions in the East Azarbaijan Province of Iran, where rural houses were carved within the cone-shaped...     

Modeling of thermodynamic properties of carrot product using ALO,GWO, and WOA algorithms under multi-stage semi-industrial continuous belt dryer

Engineering with Computers - In this paper, multi-stage continuous belt (MSCB) dryer was used for carrot slices drying. Experiments were performed at three air speeds (1, 1.5, and 2 m/s)...     

A Framework for Ground Water Management Based on Bayesian Network and MCDM Techniques

Groundwater resources are steadily subjected to increasing water demands. The aquifers are considered as the most accessible source of fresh water. In recent years, they have been faced with severe water withdrawal in arid and semi-arid countries like Iran and thus some aquifers was considered as forbidden aquifers that it means the water withdrawal from these aquifers is unauthorized. Given a critical situation, groundwater resources management in the form of tools such as monitoring the level of the aquifers and developing the restoring scenarios is essential. Therefore, for this purpose, a framework has been developed based on prediction of groundwater level using Bayesian Networks (BNs) model. Furthermore, Multi Criteria Decision Making methods (MCDM) techniques proposed and employed for ranking of proposed groundwater management scenarios. This framework was evaluated for restoring the Birjand aquifer in Iran in different hydrological conditions. A probabilistic Dynamic BN was proposed for groundwater level prediction under uncertainties. After analyzing the obtained results, the applicable short term scenarios for groundwater management as well as appropriate economic, social and technical criteria were defined for decision making procedure. Then, using elicitation of decision makers’ opinions on the relative importance and performance of criteria, SAW, TOPSIS and PROMETHEE-II techniques were applied to rank the scenarios and the obtained results were aggregated by Borda method for final ranking of the scenarios. Lastly, the final results demonstrates the capability of the proposed framework for groundwater resources planning and management which can be employed for reducing the risk of aquifer level declining.