This paper investigated the effect of prominent gas diffusion layer (GDL) on non-isothermal transport characteristics and cell performance of the proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) by the finite-volume SIMPLE-C method coupled with preconditioned conjugate gradient methods. The geometric parameters of prominent GDL are involved in the amount (N = 5, 7, and 9) and the height (H-P = 0.21, 0.31, and 0.41 mm) of prominences with the same GDL thickness for investigating the cell performance considering the effect of liquid water formation in the fluid flow field. The results show that compared with flat GDL, the prominent GDL with N = 7 and H-P = 0.21 mm prominences enhances the cell net power best by approximately 15.07% among all geometric designs. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.