Thermal performance analyses of pulsating heat pipe for application in proton exchange member fuel cell

•Simulation model of a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell is established.•Air cooling, liquid cooling and pulsating heat pipe cooling method are compared.•Pulsating heat pipe cooling method can effectively improve thermal management.•The index of uniform temperature is less in pulsating heat pipe cooling method. Proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) adopts thermal management such as air cooling and liquid cooling techniques, which can effectively transfer the excessive heat from the cell. However, auxiliary work is needed to drive the flow of fluid, which undoubtedly reduces the total power of the battery. The pulsating heat pipe (PHP) as a novel heat dissipation device can provide perfect thermal management in the PEMFC because of its compactness, fast heat transfer, and devoid of auxiliary work support. In this work, the above three cooling methods were comparably modeled. For simplification, the PHP was dealt with a solid with large heat conductivity. The results show that the liquid cooling method and the PHP cooling method can effectively reduce the temperature of the PEMFC. The index of uniform temperature of the liquid cooling method and the PHP cooling method is higher than that of the air cooling method. For the liquid cooling method, both the average temperature and the index of uniform temperature decrease gradually with increasing the inlet water velocity. For the PHP cooling method, the average temperature decreases gradually, while the index of uniform temperature increases with the increase of heat transfer coefficient of PHP’s condensation section.