Effects of hydrophilic/hydrophobic properties of gas flow channels on liquid water transport in a serpentine polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell

Understanding flexural, mechanical and physico-chemical properties of gas diffusion layers for polymer membrane fuel cell and electrolyzer systems

“…The presence of small pores in the material can result in a greater resistance to mass transfer of the reactant gases to the catalyst layer [17,18]. If pores are too large, the membrane may dehydrate due to excessive water loss [19]. Hence, the pore size and pore radius distribution are two important mechanical properties that control the performance of the fuel cell [17,20].…”

“…Hence, the optimum PTFE loading is essential to the maximum performance of a PEM fuel cell [24,25]. An excess of PTFE results in lower cell performance due to a decrease in porosity [18,19]. This limits the reactant gas from i n t e r n a t i o n a l j o u r n a l o f h y d r o g e n e n e r g y x x x ( 2 0 1 5 ) 1 e1 4 reaching the catalyst.…”

“…For example, the bending stiffness of the GDL for a 30 weight% loaded PTFE is 54 gf-cm [43,75]. The inherent non-conductive nature of PTFE increases ohmic resistance at higher loadings [18,19,76]. Higher PTFE loadings results in a reduced porosity and an increase in the mass transfer overpotential.…”

A Slope Right‐angle Turn Applied in the Flow Channel Promotes Water Management in Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells

“…Song et al. proposed a modified serpentine flow channel whose channel walls are hydrophilic at the straight part and hydrophobic at the turning part. They found that the modified flow channel could enhance water detachment compared with those channels with only hydrophilic walls or only hydrophobic walls.…”

Numerical simulation of water droplet dynamics in a right angle gas channel of a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell

“…The simulation results showed that slugs are formed at low flow rates and a channel could be blocked by slug formation caused by the redistribution of air flow and pressure. Song et al investigated numerically the effect of contact angle variation of the channel side and top walls on the droplet dynamics in the model serpentine flow channel with only one turning part by employing VOF method [55]. The four adjacent water inlet pores were aligned at the center line on the hydrophobic GDL surface near the air inlet boundary.…”