A 3 dimensional numerical model to study the effect of GDL porosity on high temperature PEM fuel cells

Jha, Vikalp; Hariharan, Ramesh; Krishnamurthy, Balaji

doi:10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2020.120311

Cited by 31 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 14 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This result further confirms that the performance degradation at high porosity is attributed to the increased ohmic resistance of A-GDL. Therefore, it can be drawn that the optimal porosity of A-GDL is suggested to be in the range of 0.5 $ 0.6, which is consistent with Reference [39]. Figure 13A shows that the electrolyzer performance increases significantly with the decrease of membrane thickness.…”

Section: Effect Of Contact Angle and Porosity Of A-gdlsupporting

confidence: 80%

3D two‐phase and non‐isothermal modeling for PEM water electrolyzer: Heat and mass transfer characteristic investigation

Zhou

Meng

Chen

et al. 2022

Intl J of Energy Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A three-dimensional, two-phase, non-isothermal proton exchange membrane (PEM) water electrolyzer model was developed, aiming to reveal water and heat distribution characteristics and to explore the effects of various parameters on heat and mass transfer and performance of the electrolyzer. The results show that the electrolyzer performance depends on the combined effect of heat and mass, especially at high voltages. Although increasing the inlet velocity can accelerate the discharge of bubbles, it causes a larger temperature drop which degrades the performance. Increasing the inlet temperature can effectively improve the kinetic reaction rate of the catalyst layer and reduce the ohmic resistance of the membrane, which promotes the performance improvement. Decreasing the contact angle of anode gas diffusion layer (A-GDL) and increasing its porosity is beneficial to the transport of liquid water and improves the performance, but excessive porosity leads to a rapid increase in the ohmic resistance of A-GDL, and the optimal porosity range is 0.5 to 0.6. In addition, changes in A-GDL porosity and contact angle have little effect on temperature. Decreasing the thickness of the membrane can significantly improve the performance, but accelerate the increase of the membrane temperature at high voltage.

show abstract

Section: Effect Of Contact Angle and Porosity Of A-gdlsupporting

confidence: 80%

3D two‐phase and non‐isothermal modeling for PEM water electrolyzer: Heat and mass transfer characteristic investigation

Zhou

Meng

Chen

et al. 2022

Intl J of Energy Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Zhang et al [ 15 ] compared and analyzed the porosity distribution of different GDLs using the stochastic reconstruction method and determined anisotropic effective transport properties using a pore-scale model. A 3-D model was established by Jha et al, to study the effect of GDL porosity on the performance of a high-temperature PEMFC [ 16 ]. They found that the cell performance could be improved when the GDL porosity was in the range of 0.5–0.6.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Cathode GDL Gradient Porosity Distribution along the Flow Channel Direction on Gas–Liquid Transport and Performance of PEMFC

et al. 2023

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The gas diffusion layer (GDL) is an important component of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs), and its porosity distribution has considerable effects on the transport properties and durability of PEMFCs. A 3-D two-phase flow computation fluid dynamics model was developed in this study, to numerically investigate the effects of three different porosity distributions in a cathode GDL: gradient-increasing (Case 1), gradient-decreasing (Case 3), and uniform constant (Case 2), on the gas–liquid transport and performance of PEMFCs; the novelty lies in the porosity gradient being along the channel direction, and the physical properties of the GDL related to porosity were modified accordingly. The results showed that at a high current density (2400 mA·cm−2), the GDL of Case 1 had a gas velocity of up to 0.5 cm·s−1 along the channel direction. The liquid water in the membrane electrode assembly could be easily removed because of the larger gas velocity and capillary pressure, resulting in a higher oxygen concentration in the GDL and the catalyst layer. Therefore, the cell performance increased. The voltage in Case 1 increased by 8% and 71% compared to Cases 2 and 3, respectively. In addition, this could ameliorate the distribution uniformity of the dissolved water and the current density in the membrane along the channel direction, which was beneficial for the durability of the PEMFC. The distribution of the GDL porosity at lower current densities had a less significant effect on the cell performance. The findings of this study may provide significant guidance for the design and optimization of the GDL in PEMFCs.

show abstract

“…Vikalp Jha et al 8 established a 3D mathematical model to study the impact of the GDL porosity on fuel cells. The porosity of GDL is optimal in the range of 0.5 to 0.6, and the oxygen consumption decreases when the porosity is further increased.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Several researchers have studied the intrusion/ deformation of GDL caused by fuel cell assembly tightening force, 6,7 and in the practical case, if the fuel cell assembly tightening force is certain, only the change of porosity also causes GDL intrusion/deformation, which can be explained as the effect of porosity change on fuel cell performance. This study also refers to related papers, 8,9 where they ignore the GDL intrusion/ deformation caused by land compression when only the porosity is changed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multi‐objective optimization of porous layers for proton exchange membrane fuel cells based on neural network surrogate model

Liu

Chen

Tan

et al. 2022

Intl J of Energy Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Summary In this paper, the impacts of three important parameters of a proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) porous layer: the porosity of the catalytic layer (CL), the electrolyte volume fraction of the CL, and the porosity of the gas diffusion layer (GDL) on the performance of the PEMFC were studied. The electrolyte is composed of platinum catalyst and ionomer. Considering the high cost of platinum catalyst, the goal of parameter optimization of the porous layer is to improve the PEMFC output power density while reducing the electrolyte volume fraction. To achieve this goal, a 3‐dimensional two‐phase isothermal PEMFC model was built. Under different operating voltages and porous layer parameters, run the PEMFC physical model to obtain a set of data, use the data to train the neural network to replace the physical model, and then use the multi‐objective optimization algorithm to optimize the porous layer parameters. The results show that when the operating voltage is 0.4951, the porosity of the CL is 0.2647, the electrolyte volume fraction is 0.4471, and the porosity of the GDL is 0.5043, and the overall performance is good. Compared with the original model, the optimized model improves the maximum output power density by 3.56% and reduces the electrolyte volume fraction by 10.58%.

show abstract

A 3 dimensional numerical model to study the effect of GDL porosity on high temperature PEM fuel cells

Cited by 31 publications

References 14 publications

3D two‐phase and non‐isothermal modeling for PEM water electrolyzer: Heat and mass transfer characteristic investigation

3D two‐phase and non‐isothermal modeling for PEM water electrolyzer: Heat and mass transfer characteristic investigation

Effects of Cathode GDL Gradient Porosity Distribution along the Flow Channel Direction on Gas–Liquid Transport and Performance of PEMFC

Multi‐objective optimization of porous layers for proton exchange membrane fuel cells based on neural network surrogate model

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About