Abstract: Designing bio-inspired flow fields holds great potential in improving the performance of Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC). Two kinds of biological prototypes are widely used: plant prototype and animal prototype. It remains a question which one of these prototypes is more appropriate for the scenario of PEMFC. Here, a comparative study was conducted to compare bionic flow fields based on animal and plant prototypes. First, a Corn Leaf Vein Mathematical Model (CLMM) was established by extracting structural parameters from corn leaves of two growth stages. Then the obtained CLMM and well-known Murray’s law were employed to design bionic flow fields corresponding to the plant and animal prototypes, respectively, which have been subsequently compared by numerical investigations. The results demonstrate that the flow field guided by Murray’s law outperforms the counterpart based on the structural parameters of CLMM in terms of PEMFC net output power, mass transport, water management and pressure drop, suggesting that animal circulation system is more suitable to the bionic flow field design of PEMFC than plant leaf veins. The work may also offer valuable insights into the design of other flow fields related to electrochemical energy conversion.

Key words: Proton exchange membrane fuel cell, Flow feld, Biological prototypes, Corn leaf vein, Murray’s law, Comparative study